The ~30-45 minutes anywhere on earth says otherwise
SpaceX - is it a pipe dream?
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The ~30-45 minutes anywhere on earth says otherwise
Soldato
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I can see huge military benefits from this, just think... you could send soldiers anywhere on earth within 30-45 minutes, that is a huge military and strategic advantage.
There is also the whole Search and Rescue side too, sending people or supplies to any point of earth in a crisis, especially to remote places.
There is also the whole Search and Rescue side too, sending people or supplies to any point of earth in a crisis, especially to remote places.
Ha there's always one
For every benefit there's a dozen drawbacks. I mean, in a war zone dropping in on top of what is essentially a massive explosive... Equally in natural disaster zones.
Then there's the hugely toxic and polluting cryogenic fuels
He wants electric cars and fast electric trains, fair play (though Hyperloop hasn't addressed many of the technical challenges for high speed travel in a 0.01% atmosphere, but that's a rant for elsewhere) but PASSENGER ROCKETS?!
Then there's the hugely toxic and polluting cryogenic fuels
If the world adopts EVs though, then pollution from a few hundred passenger rockets a day will be negligible in comparison. Especially if the world goes all in on renewables like solar. Musk is a total utopianist, but at least he's trying. That said, part of me does think that the whole 'travel the Earth by rockets' thing is a ploy to get some more investment for the real goal of getting the damn things built to go to Mars.
they aren't polluting or toxic, oxygen and methane.Then there's the hugely toxic and polluting cryogenic fuels
hypergolics are extremely toxic but thats, not whats used.
you may want to lay of thunderf00t as he just makes BS videos.
Maybe, maybe not. Probably some people did. It's irrelevant. "some unspecified people were wrong about something different for different reasons" is not a compelling counter-argument.
You're talking about high-g acceleration, thousands of tonnes of explosive fuel used in an engine with very limited control (that's inherent in a rocket), and speeds of 20,000 km/h (which makes even very small solid objects a significant risk).
So it's an inherent medical risk even if nothing goes wrong (due to the acceleration) and if something goes wrong the least bad outcome is that it explodes with enough force to blast the rocket into small enough pieces for them to not be a significant risk to people on the ground. There won't be survivable accidents. A crash landing would be like a non-nuclear ICBM, but that probably wouldn't happen since rockets very strongly tend to explode when something goes wrong.
It's more polluting than jet-powered planes, of course. Making huge amounts of methane and using it as a rocket fuel is not environmentally neutral. Far from it.
It's not extremely useful. There would be limited launch and landing sites, especially in the beginning but not just in the beginning. You're not going to have a launch site for massive rockets in a city. That would be stupidly reckless. So travel time to and from the airport would be longer, reducing the amount by which total travel time is reduced. You'll still have the same embarkation, travel control, security and "security" delays, so the reduction in total travel time will be reduced further. It won't make a trip from anywhere to anywhere like hopping on a local bus. It won't make it a casual thing. The reduction in travel time is far less significant than it's often made out to be and if time really is of the essence, physical travel isn't the right answer. The idea that the reuseable rocket engines will make the ticket price on a par with an economy aeroplane ticket is optimistic. They won't be as reusable as existing jet engines.
I think his plans to become the world's biggest ISP are vastly more likely to fund his plans for Mars than using rocket-powered spaceships for large scale routine earth to earth trips, which is implausible superficial talking about something not particularly useful that doesn't have a particularly large potential market. Also vastly more likely to actually work, since if he can get the BFR working he can have the ISP thing ready to go and implemented in a matter of weeks after the BFR started launching. Maybe days. If you have a reusable rocketship with huge cargo capacity in terms of both volume and weight, you can get a lot of comms satellites up in a very short amount of time. Enough to provide a boatload of bandwidth and be accessible from almost anywhere any human on Earth will be. Even if he doesn't price it cheaper than competitors, he has enough of a halo effect to bring in lots of customers.
Arguably Hyperloop is a continuation away from fossil fuel reliance. It would replace a significant number of trains (generally hydrocarbon fuelled) and planes, as well as potentially coaches (depending on price), all while being quicker than all of them to get from A-B.
His argument is also that it would be cheaper than conventional rail, and especially so compared to maglev and other high speed rail tech. It doesn’t need all the track prep that those do, in theory anyway.
Not all is as bright in the Musk stable as may seem. Have a look into Tesla factory conditions. By many accounts they seem have a long way to go for employment satisfaction before they compete with the established players there unfortunately.
I am highly skeptical of anything regarding Elon Musk, he has several ridiculous failed projects under his belt now like the hyperloop, ridiculous idea that was.
Rocket engines are inherently unsafe, you are essentially sitting on a massive bomb, count me out.
Rocket engines are inherently unsafe, you are essentially sitting on a massive bomb, count me out.
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You're gonna have to try a little harder to convince me than that, on one hand we have an accomplished scientist making well reasoned arguments with the calculations to back it up, and on the other hand we don't even have a half working hyperloop after all this time.
So what if several companies are working on it, that's not a measure of success, how many cancer patients has homeopathy cured?
Actually he doesn't,he ignores equations, he ignores logic. All can be found in the comment sections.
You trust him over active companies spending there own cash on it.
For a start the air rushing in from a breach would not be supersonic.
You don't need a million expansion joints. It doesn't even need to be above ground.
Turbine isn't the only way, as shown in the subscale testing.
All this time, lol. What an utterly redicoulusestatemnt. Its been a few years. These things aren't fast and never has been.
Soldato
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Oh dear.
Soldato
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there's always one, as if it isn't blatantly obvious faking the moon landings would take more resources than just doing it.