Elon Musk announces plans for 39-minute trips from NYC to SH
flickr: Jorg Schubert
Where can you get to from central Shanghai in under 40 minutes? Suzhou by train? Sure. Songjiang by car? Almost. New York City by rocket? Say what?
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his aerospace manufacturer/space travel company SpaceX have announced plans for a BFR ('Big Fucking Rocket'/'Big Falcon Rocket'), a reusable rocket that will (in theory) be able to transport humans to the moon and Mars by 2022 and 2024 respectively, as well as potentially revolutionising international travel as we know it.
According to The Atlantic, amongst other sources, at a recent conference in Australia, Musk announced plans for a rocket capable of travelling up to 27,000kph, that would be able to complete most earth-based journeys in around half an hour (e.g. Honolulu to Tokyo) – all at the price of 'full fare economy in an aircraft'.
It is yet to be revealed when these ridiculously fast journeys will be available to members of the public, but the rocket – seating up to 100 passengers – would be able to travel from New York to Shanghai in a mind-boggling 39 minutes (even more mind-boggling when you think it took me longer than that to write this article).
And to think, we were still pretty excited about the fast train now getting to Beijing 30 minutes quicker...
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