Elon Musk's SpaceX rockets could blast us off to… Earth? – CNET


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Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets could blast us off to… Earth?

If we’re building rockets to send us to Mars, why not use them on Earth? Musk asks the question at the 2017 International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia.

Elon Musk Presents SpaceX Plans To Colonise Mars

Mark Brake / Getty Images

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Friday his ambitions aren’t limited to interplanetary travel. He has his eye on international routes, as well.

“If we’re building this [ship] to go to the Moon and Mars,” Musk challenged the audience at the 2017 International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia, “then why not go to other places on earth as well?”

Musk says we could use SpaceX’s BFR (that stands for “Big F*****g Rocket,” if you’re wondering) to transport people between any two points on Earth in under an hour. Most destinations would take less than half that time. New York to Shanghai, for instance, would be a 39 minute trip, a fraction of the exhausting 15 hours it currently takes via airplane. 

Musk ended his presentation with a video teasing the idea that was designed to be the proverbial mic drop. He didn’t make clear whether SpaceX actually intends to implement the technology for international travel.

“We looked at that and the results are quite interesting,” Musk said, leaving us hanging.

Musk also left us hanging about his plans for Mars, though he did offer a little more detail. He wants to send ships to the Red Planet in 2022, with human being following in two years’ time. Once said humans are actually there, they’ll start building a propellant plant to make interplanetary travel easier. That’ll be the bedrock for the Mars utopia we’re all hoping for.     

SpaceX will be using the BFR ship, which will take around 100 passengers at a time. It’s also the most efficient of the company’s fleet, thanks to it being largely reusable.  

“It’s really crazy that we build these sophisticated rockets and then crash them every time we fly,” he said. 

Other than reusable spacecrafts, Musk plans to cut the cost of Mars travel by refueling in orbit, building the aforementioned propellant plant Mars and using methane, abundant on Mars, as a fuel source. 

Musk first laid out his scheme to build a 1-million-person strong colony on the Red Planet at last year’s IAC in Mexico. Questions regarding day-to-day essentials, like what we’ll use for toilet paper, remain unanswered.

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