Elon Musk wants to fly people around the world in under an hour
The SpaceX rocket landing in Shanghai. Screenshot via SpaceX/YouTube
SpaceX's founder, Elon Musk, presented his vision for getting people to Mars within five years at the International Astronautical Congress in the South Australia city of Adelaide on Friday.
The spaceship, dubbed the BFR, would carry about 100 people into outer space, but at the end of his presentation he floated the idea of using it to fly anywhere around the world in less than 60 minutes.
He painted a picture of people boarding a ship in New York City to head out to a launchpad in the Hudson River, where they take a 7,400-mile flight from the Big Apple to Shanghai in just 39 minutes.
The most popular long-haul flights could be completed in under 30 minutes, Musk said — from Los Angeles to New York in 25 minutes; Melbourne, Australia, to Singapore or New York to London in 29 minutes; New York to Paris in 30 minutes; and Sydney to Cape Town, South Africa, in 35 minutes or all the way to Zurich in 50 minutes.
“If we're building this thing to go to the moon and Mars, then why not go to other places on earth as well?" he said.
Musk offered no insight on costs, but the idea would be the most dramatic change to air travel since the supersonic Concord arrived on the scene in the mid-1970s, traveling at twice the speed of sound and cutting the eight-hour flight between Paris and New York to less than 3 1/2 hours.
He also promised a smooth ride.
"Once you're out of the atmosphere," he said, "it will be smooth as silk, no turbulence, nothing."
Watch SpaceX's video on the idea below:
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