Transport entrepreneur, Elon Musk is once again planning to revolutionize the way we travel. The Elon Musk-owned SPACEX is turning its attention to terrestrial travel and its revolutionary rockets will dramatically reduce flight times, meaning a flight from London to New York could take as little as 30 minutes, experts claim. SpaceX is revolutionizing the space race with its reusable rockets. Within decades of launching, the company has landed contracts with NASA to blast astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) and has announced designs for manned Mars missions. And SpaceX has now set its sights on transforming terrestrial travel, rendering traditional long-haul transport obsolete, experts have claimed. A journey from London to New York currently lasts longer than eight hours but SpaceX could see this flight time slashed dramatically-by seven and half hours to be exact.
"While some see space servicing the long-haul travel market as science fiction, we think there is a large market," stated UBS analysts Jarrod Castle and Myles Walton
But a trip between the two cities would only take 29 minutes on Elon Musk's SpaceX Starship, experts say. Getting from A to B anywhere on Earth via outer-space could "cannibalize" the current market for long-haul trips. Investment bank UBS believes the market of point-to-point rocket travel will be worth 15 billion euros or 20 billion dollars in less than a decade. SpaceX rockets traversing the upper atmosphere could play a pivotal role in the future of long-haul air travel on Earth, the financial experts have said. And this extraterrestrial travel via outer space represents a potentially lucrative market for the likes of Elon Musk's SpaceX and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, who have also entered the space tourism race.
Jarrod Castle and Myles Walton, analysts with UBS, said: "Although some might view the potential to use space to service the long-haul travel market as science fiction, we think there is a large market. While space tourism is still at a nascent phase, we think that as technology becomes proven, and the cost falls due to technology and competition, space tourism will become more mainstream."
Experts estimate longer haul flights, such as the notorious London to Sydney, which can currently take 23 hours, would take less than an hour on a SpaceX Starship rocket. With these exciting advancements in Earth travel, one can only hope for it to be affordable to all travelers.
