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Elon Musk Proposes City-to-City Travel By Rocket, Right Here on Earth (theverge.com)
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. From a report: Musk showed a demonstration of the idea onstage, 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 as 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. In SpaceX's video that illustrates the idea, passengers take a large boat from a dock in New York City to a floating launchpad out in the water. There, they board the same rocket that Musk wants to use to send humans to Mars by 2024. But instead of heading off to another planet once they leave the Earth's atmosphere, the ship separates and breaks off toward another city -- Shanghai. Just 39 minutes and some 7,000 miles later, the ship reenters the atmosphere and touches down on another floating pad, much like the way SpaceX lands its Falcon 9 rockets at sea. Other routes proposed in the video include Hong Kong to Singapore in 22 minutes, London to Dubai or New York in 29 minutes, and Los Angeles to Toronto in 24 minutes.
He is not "proposing" this idea--he's suggesting he can implement it.
The notion of suborbital/ballistic transport has been downright common for decades. The question isn't whether you could launch such a thing, or how long it would take, but rather the cost of propelling such a thing (and the willingness of anyplace to have an incoming object like this).
hawk
It's incorrect to compare this to a zero base state - if the travel didn't happen at all. The correct comparison is to what would happen if this rocket travel weren't available. i.e. what happens right now? People fly between these locations.
Nope. Jevons paradox kicks in. If you can get between London and New York in 25 minutes for no more cost than an airline economy ticket, more people would be doing it than now, negating any savings in fuel consumption. Like aircraft are more efficient than ocean liners in terms of fuel per passenger-mile, but far more people travel by aircraft now than by ship in the 1930's and the total fuel consumed is greater.
Costs of space rockets compared with aircraft is not just about fuel. Rockets structures are more minimal than aircraft so are very highly stressed (to save weight). The amount of inspection, looking for fatigue cracks etc, that re-usable people-carrying rockets would have to undergo will be very expensive.
The BFR hold 240 tons of methane and 860 tons of oxygen. A 747 uses 10 tons of fuel and hour and carries 524 passengers. You can do your own math.
love is just extroverted narcissism
The point stands though that this is incredibly wasteful
The idea is to eventually create the methane fuel via the Sabatier process which converts carbon dioxide and water into methane. This is a necessary capability to refuel on Mars. Using solar energy to power the fuel manufacturing process would essentially make this vehicle solar powered.
Most noxious emissions from combustion are due to:
Once out of the earth's atmosphere, aerodynamic drag goes away. Which also might save some energy.
Please watch the entire talk. It's very informative.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".