Elon Musk wants to make travel as fast as possible. On Wednesday, the CEO explained on his Twitter page how two of his biggest ideas — the hyperloop vacuum-sealed transit system, and the SpaceX BFR — could combine to make one superfast system that can transport humans across the planet in under an hour.
Musk explained that The Boring Company will be able to build a hyperloop that takes passengers from the city center out to a spaceport in as little as 10 minutes. SpaceX plans to offer “Earth-to-Earth” trips from spaceports using the BFR, the same rocket the company plans to use for manned Mars trips in 2024. These rockets, detailed at the IAC in Adelaide, Australia last September, will take passengers anywhere on earth in under an hour, with a trip from New York City to Shanghai in less than 25 minutes. Passengers could wake up, grab diner breakfast in Manhattan, hop on a rocket and eat dumplings for lunch in The Bund.
The Boring Company has become a key player in the race to build the hyperloop, the 700mph system first outlined by Musk in a white paper in 2013. While Musk initially stayed out of the fray to leave companies like Virgin Hyperloop One to flourish, he decried the state of progress in August 2017 as a spokesperson said “other companies were not moving quickly enough.”
Musk has made rapid progress on getting hyperloop into the real world. He showed off a portion of the company’s proof-of-concept tunnel last week underneath suburban Los Angeles, with plans to offer free rides to the public in a few months. From here, the company has started work on a New York to Washington, D.C. route that could support hyperloop one day. The company plans to build a “true hyperloop with pressurized pods in near-vacuum tunnels, and faster than a jetliner” from San Francisco to Los Angeles starting in 2019 — which would make a spaceport connection seem trivial by comparison.
The company is hosting a press conference, presented by Musk, on Thursday at 7 p.m.. The conference, which will be livestreamed, will involve Musk taking questions about the company’s plans for Los Angeles.
The moves could signal the end of long haul flights for good.
