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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 30 2017, @07:02PM
We already have rockets that take nuclear warheads to other continents within an hour.
This one could take troops. Up to two hundred troops at a time. You could send a full company with materiel anywhere in the world within an hour.
The new dogma might go something like this: an initial barrage of cruise missiles, then air strikes to wipe out remaining air defenses, then an air war accompanied by rocket-borne companies descending at each airport in the theater to secure landing sites for airlifted reinforcements and bases for further projection of air power. This blitz might take about a day from the first cruise missile volleys to the possession of airstrips. The second day, further troops are airlifted into the airports, which also serve the air war, and the ground war begins.