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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveiled revised plans to travel to the Moon and Mars at a space industry conference today, but he ended his talk with a pretty incredible promise: using that same interplanetary rocket system for long distance travel on Earth. Musk showed a demonstration of the idea on stage, claiming that it will allow passengers to take "most long distance trips" in just 30 minutes, and go "anywhere on Earth in under an hour" for around the same price of an economy airline ticket.
Musk proposed using SpaceX's forthcoming mega-rocket (codenamed "Big Fucking Rocket" or BFR for short) to lift a massive spaceship into orbit around the Earth. The ship would then settle down on floating landing pads near major cities. Both the new rocket and spaceship are currently theoretical, though Musk did say that he hopes to begin construction on the rocket in the next six to nine months.
Travelling by HyperLoop is so yesterday.
[Ed. addition follows] See also: The New York Times and Technology Review.
Video of the full presentation at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Adelaide, Australia is available on YouTube: Making Life Multiplanetary.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday September 30 2017, @06:27AM (9 children)
Elon Musk’s idea for commercial rocket travel on Earth would be a logistical nightmare - ‘The reentry would kill people’ [theverge.com]
Lockheed Martin trumps SpaceX Mars plans as Elon Musk cancels press conference [smh.com.au]
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(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Saturday September 30 2017, @07:55AM (7 children)
And no-one noticed the Lockheed Martin announcement.
Just looking now their project is to put man in orbit around earth. They talk about selecting a landing site as being one of their mission goals. But not landing.
Musk's is to land man on mars.
Sounds like the two are complementary.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Saturday September 30 2017, @08:59AM
Apparently takyon did.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Saturday September 30 2017, @03:52PM (3 children)
No, the Lockheed concept puts a manned orbiting station around Mars and uses it to send a lander later. We should call it the Mars International Space Station.
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(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Saturday September 30 2017, @08:51PM (2 children)
There seems little doubt SpaceX will be the company to put man on Mars, not Lockheed Martin.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday September 30 2017, @09:15PM (1 child)
Hint:
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(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday October 01 2017, @05:10AM
The rocket that brings it there will then be called Mars International Space Transportation Enabling Rocket.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 30 2017, @06:49PM (1 child)
I think it's more accurate to say that nobody cared about Lockheed's announcement.
Lockheed and Boeing had decades to do what SpaceX promised, and then did - and continues to do. They instead chose to milk the taxpayer for the maximum possible, while producing the bare minimum. On top of that they also chose to mock SpaceX for trying to do something revolutionary. All the way up until SpaceX began launching, recovering, and then relaunching ships Lockheed/Boeing insisted that it was impossible. That, once it became clear it most certainly was, became 'not economically viable' and now they've gone silent having their feet likely embedded a bit too deeply within their mouths. Their CEO [wikipedia.org] (and president and chairperson) is some MBA with 0 technical ability or knowledge. The hallmark of her career is the F-35 - a bunch of massively overbudget, delayed planes, that perform awfully and are expected to cost the taxpayer about $1.5 trillion. The entire company has no vision, no technical leadership, and exists to do little more than take the maximum amount of money possible away from the taxpayer.
If Lockheed gets to Mars it'll cost about $5 trillion, be 40 years overbudget, and the ship will catch on fire once it gets there. The last part being a little joke about the F-35 I expect many might not get. As of late 2016 the F-35's still had this pesky problem of occasionally bursting into flames [defensenews.com] at random times, even including takeoff. It's been happening for years. Lockheed assures us they have it nailed down. They just need a few hundred billion more dollars to make sure. Oh and occasionally the oxygen regulation system also just blows up and pilots get life threatening hypoxia. They still haven't quite figured that one out. That is lockheed in a nutshell.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday September 30 2017, @08:49PM
Both the F-22 and F-35 have had hypoxia issues:
http://www.airforce-technology.com/news/newsroot-cause-f22-raptor-hypoxia-identified-usaf [airforce-technology.com]
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/air-force-clears-f-35-to-fly-again-with-caveats-after-hypoxia-scares/ [arstechnica.com]
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Saturday September 30 2017, @02:12PM
There's a definite alarmist slant to that Verge article. I mean yeah, rocket landings currently don't have anywhere remotely near the nearly the safety track record of commercial aircraft, but they've advanced remarkably quickly when you consider that the very first successful landing was less than two years ago.
Add another 5-10 years of landing advancements and track-record building while they develop an entirely new passenger-class rocket, and things will likely look much better.
And then there's gems like: "One of the most striking conclusions to come out of the DOT paper is the effects this type of futuristic travel could have on pilots." When has a SpaceX rocket ever had a pilot? They'd likely have a "captain" on a commercial passenger line, to comfort the passengers if nothing else, but their job would be scheduling, oversight, and maybe occasional crisis management, not handling the in-flight piloting details on a regular basis - I rather doubt a human pilot would have the reflexes to successfully land a rocket anyway, even if they didn't have to pull off a Falcon 9 -style hoverslam maneuver.