The Death Of The Passenger Aeroplane - SpaceX BFR

Today saw the latest live conference from arguably the world's most influential entrepreneur of modern times, Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX. The talk was centred around the company's soon to be built BFR, and I'm sure you can decrypt that acronym yourself!!

The BFR is primarily a rocket to replace all SpaceX's current rockets with a goal of flying cargo to Mars as early as 2022! and passengers in 2024! This is a very optimistic plan, but nevertheless it is building excitement in space exploration which is never a bad thing.

Earth To Earth

The conference ended with a surprise though, as Elon unveiled plans to make this rocket part of the transport industry here on earth.. The BFR (currently just a codename by the way) will be capable of taking people around the world in staggeringly quick times! Here are the plans and facts:

• Comfortable seat around 100 passengers. Airbus A380 can sit around 555 passengers.
• Travel at speeds of 18,000 mph in LEO (low earth orbit). Airbus A380 - 560 mph.
• Cost per seat will be the same as a full economy seat in current aeroplanes.
• Capable of carrying 150 tonnes of cargo. Airbus A380 - 150 tonnes of cargo.
• Travel most long distance trips within 30 minutes.
• Anywhere in the world in under 60 minutes.

The big one in that list is the price, if SpaceX is capable of getting the price of a seat as low as current economy aeroplane seat prices then I think there is no question that this will be a success, even at a higher yet still affordable price it would be a breakthrough in the transport sector! Imagine going from London to Sydney in 51 minutes as opposed to 20 hours on Airbus A380 .. You wouldnt even have time to watch a film.

Check out the video that ended the conference with a bang below:

Thanks for reading!

Taran here, owner of Nomad'er How Far. I'm fond of psychedelic rock, photography & videography, anything to do with space and I'm also partial to the odd gaming session. Oh and I love to travel :P Get to know me here!

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