Dubai: Elon Musk has announced plans to build a superfast rocket that can transport passengers from Dubai to London in 29 minutes.
Musk, who is the chief executive officer of SpaceX – an American aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company – made the announcement on Friday after attending the 68th International Astronautical Congress in Australia, where he unveiled his ambitious plans to send cargo ships to Mars in five years.
“I feel fairly confident that we can complete the ship and launch in about five years,” he said.
At least two cargo ships would land on the Red Planet in 2022, with the key mission of finding the best source of water — currently mooted as a way to power rockets, he said.
Musk also posted a video on social networking sites to give viewers an idea of how the rocket ship, code named “BFR”, will look like.
Although it is still in the planning stage, the aim is to make “most long-distance trips” under 30 minutes long and go “anywhere on Earth in under an hour” for around the same price as an economy airline ticket.
The hypersonic craft will fly at a maximum speed of 27,000 km/hr, with Musk proposing trips from Bangkok to Dubai in 27 minutes, London to Dubai in 29 minutes and Sydney to Dubai in 40 minutes.
This is not the first time that supersonic transport made headlines. Boom, a US-based start-up that markets supersonic jets for commercial use, was in the UAE earlier this year to pitch the state-of-the-art technology at the Dubai Future Foundation.
The jet promised to take passengers from the region to places like New York for a little over seven hours, instead of more than 14 hours, and London for more than four hours, instead of seven hours and 30 minutes.
