Gwynne Shotwell: SpaceX's Plan to Fly You Across the Globe in 30 Minutes [video]

Rocket based travel will never ever ever happen on a widespread scale simply because of the G forces involved. Passengers on an airliner will begin feeling uncomfortable at around 1.2 G's and > 20 degrees of bank angle. The thought of subjecting regular paying passengers to 3+ G's and a full 360 degrees of pitch/roll is absurd. It could definitely be a niche thing for people that are physically fit, but this just isn't the way to go for high speed transportation. More traditional airframes and scramjets are far more likely to make hypersonic travel a reality.

The main thing I'm thinking of is noise pollution. You think living near an airport is loud? I cannot even imagine what living near a BFR spaceport would be like. For coastal cities maybe it would be worth it to build a landing pad on an ocean platform some miles out to sea, but what about for cities like Atlanta or Beijing? There's nowhere around them to build that isn't already a suburb.

I think SpaceX should just sell this service to military clients. The other comments here are talking about noise pollution, G-forces, bank angles, and other negative downsides of the service. However, if you have a bunch of active-duty, trained personnel who need to get across the globe ASAP, this is something I could see the military paying for. Moreover, most bases are not directly next to large population centers, which helps with the noise pollution argument.

As a business model I think SpaceX should be a manufacturer and not in the transportation business akin to Boeing or Airbus. There is a ton of logistics involved in transporting people globally. Of course there is the safety issues as well.

Betting against Elon Musk is historically unprofitable but if there was one of those bets saying that SpaceX will never actually field this other than for PR purposes then I'd probably take it.

I&#x27;m glad Gwynne is talking about this rather than Elon as I always take what Elon says with a large grain of &quot;execution&quot; salt (as in sure you can do that but not when you think you can).<p>Things will be very different when BFRs are flying regularly. BFRs imply full reusability, and full reusability implies a short &#x27;cycle&#x27; time, which implies a much greater earth to orbit capacity, with implies a greater supply and more reliability to orbit, which implies that it stops being crazy to require that you have three or four launches in a single year to get all of your &quot;stuff&quot; into orbit.<p>The logistics of space launch are still crazy. You can launch two rockets in a weekend using two launch pads but you can&#x27;t yet launch multiple rockets a week from the <i>same</i> launch pad.

I think a major point that isn&#x27;t being talked enough about in public (although I&#x27;m sure people in SpaceX have considered it before coming up with numbers) with the &quot;point-to-point&quot; transport system is simple demand-supply economics. Sure, let&#x27;s say they can run 10 100-person flights per day from New York to Shanghai but do that many people even want to travel that route on that particular day?

This is going to be big with the crowd that has jumbo jets as a personal airplane.[1]<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;boeing-747-8-vip-private-jet-2016-6" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;boeing-747-8-vip-private-jet-...</a>

How do you tell the difference between commercial scheduled rocket flights and incoming ICBM&#x27;s?

What would be the environmental impact of ubiquitous rocket launches for business travel?

Does that mean no food, no snacks during the flight? That sucks.

SpaceX is promising something that is feasibly decades away?<p>Do people still believe in Elon? Or have we figured out these are advertisements.

&gt;This is the only time I&#x27;ve out-visioned Elon ... <i>I</i> want to meet other people in other solar systems.<p>You&#x27;re not out-visioning Elon; it&#x27;s a petty attempt at one-upmanship. It just doesn&#x27;t seem genuine. I want to meet people in other Superclusters. Now she&#x27;s been out-visioned!