Elon Musk Wants Humans to Travel the World by Rocket
SpaceX has been working on an interplanetary rocket system that would allow humans to travel to the planet Mars and the Moon, but CEO Elon Musk has revealed another interesting use for it.
Musk believes that the same rocket can be used here on Earth for some ultra-fast travel. At the International Astronautical Congress held in Australia, he talked about the idea of making long-distance trips around the world last just under an hour.
If we're building this thing to go to the moon and Mars, why not go other places as well?
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He revealed that the rocket system has more room for passengers than an Airbus A380 airplane and could take them to one continent to another in a day with few hours to spare.
With a maximum speed of nearly 18,000 mph, Musk said flying from New York to Shanghai on the rocket will just take 39 minutes. New York to London would only take half an hour.
To make this work, Musk said that they will set up landing pads for the mega-rocket, which he refers to as Big F—ing Rocket or BFR, near major cities.
Musk hopes that this ambitious rocket system of his will begin construction within the next six to nine months. Before that, The Verge points out that there are a lot of factors to consider in the idea before putting it to action.
The main thing is ensuring a safe experience for the passengers as they are blasted off to another city. The other is the perfecting the landing.
While SpaceX has improved on this department with their Falcon 9 rockets (tests involve no humans aboard though), the abovementioned publication points out that successfully landing a rocket full of people is another story that Musk is hoped to talk about soon.
Of course, before the Earth city to city travel, the interplanetary rocket system is born out of Musk's desire to colonize Mars and build a "self-sustaining civilization" on the planet as fast as possible. He knows the risk that comes with it, going so far as to say that the first people on that mission should be "prepared to die."
