SpaceX aims to launch you aboard Starship anywhere on Earth in under an hour!

Featured Image Source: SpaceX 

SpaceX is in the process of developing the Starship launch vehicle at the South Texas launch facility in Boca Chica Beach. Starship is designed to support some of SpaceX’s most incredibly ambitious missions that will completely revolutionize the future of humanity. The aerospace company’s goals range from – a space tour around the moon by year 2023 and building a sustainable city on Mars by 2050. One of the most unexpected missions of this spacecraft is that the founder of SpaceX Elon Musk envisions a future where Starship can transport passengers at hypersonic speed to point-to-point destinations around Earth. Imagine traveling aboard Starship anywhere on Earth in under an hour!

The Starship travels at 17,500 mph. It's an order of magnitude faster than the supersonic jet Concorde.

Think about what this actually means:

Bangkok → Dubai in twenty-seven minutes.

London → New York in twenty-nine minutes.

Sydney → Singapore in thirty-one minutes.

— Peter H. Diamandis (@PeterDiamandis) January 4, 2021

This Earth-to-Earth version of Starship would have the capability to transport 1,000 passengers strapped in seats. It would blast off a spaceport at sea, exit the atmosphere, and circle the globe in a matter of minutes – traveling at Mach 25, a speed over 17,500 miles per hour (29,000 kilometers). Way faster than the speed of a supersonic jet Concorde which flies at 1,354 miles per hour (2,179 kilometers), and much faster than a commercial aircraft that flies at approximately 600 miles per hour (965 kilometers). Flying from New York to Paris on a commercial airplane typically takes around 7 hours and 20 minutes, that same trip on board Starship would only take ~30 minutes! Musk likened the trip aboard a Starship to a roller-coaster ride –“Probably needs a restraint mechanism like Disney’s Space Mountain roller coaster. Would feel similar to Space Mountain in a lot of ways, but you’d exit on another continent,” he said late-2019. Upon arrival to the destination Starship would turn on its tail, fire retro-rockets, to land vertically at a complementary sea spaceport in another country to disembark its passengers.

Image Source: SpaceX 

Starship will require a powerful Super Heavy rocket booster to propel it into orbit. The Super Heavy Starship launch system will be very noisy, so, launching from a spaceport at sea far away from cities will be the best option to conduct frequent trips. “Most Starship spaceports will probably need to be ~20 miles/30km offshore for acceptable noise levels, especially for frequent daily flights, as would occur for point to point flights on Earth,” Musk said. SpaceX has plans to build the first Super Heavy-class spaceport at Boca Chica Beach, Texas, in the Gulf of Mexico. “There will be many test flights before commercial passengers are carried. First Earth to Earth test flights might be in 2 or 3 years,” Musk said in June last year.

Those test flights are proceeding as planned.

Back in September 2017, @elonmusk announced his intentions to retire his current rocket fleet, both the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, and replace them with the Starships in the 2020s.

— Peter H. Diamandis (@PeterDiamandis) January 4, 2021

The launch system will be fully reusable with Super Heavy rocket reflight possible every few hours and Starship reflight every 8 hours. Engineers aim to create a stainless-steel Starship capable of being as reusable as an airplane, with a lifespan of around 20 to 30 years. Reusability is key to significantly reduce the cost of spaceflight. President of SpaceX Gwynne Shotwell said in 2019 she expects a ticket to fly aboard Starship to an Earth-to-Earth destination will cost a little more than an economy class flight but cheaper than a first-class airplane ticket. The future is exciting! You can watch an animation of the Earth-to-Earth Starship in the video below, courtesy of SpaceX.

Starship VS. Airplane Flight Duration 

Los Angeles to New York
Airplane: 5 hours 25 minutes
Starship: 25 minutes

Bangkok to Dubai
Airplane: 6 hours 25 minutes
Starship: 27 minutes

Tokyo to Singapore
Airplane: 7 hours 10 minutes
Starship: 28 minutes

London to New York
Airplane: 7 hours 55 minutes
Starship: 29 minutes  

New York to Paris
Airplane: 7 hours 20 minutes 
Starship: 30 minutes

Sydney to Singapore
Airplane: 8 hours 20 minutes
Starship: 31 minutes

Los Angeles to London
Airplane: 10 hours 30 minutes
Starship: 32 minutes

London to Hong Kong
Airplane: 11 hours 50 minutes
Starship: 34 minutes 

Source: SpaceX