One hour City-to-City anywhere on earth

…well, you have to know these things when you're a king…

 

This was something that was always in the local paper in the town I grew up in when I was a kid: something similar was being developed a couple of miles from my house, at the company my Dad worked at.

HOTOL - Wikipedia



It was always going to be happening in the next five years or so.

It never did happen.

As someone who now lives 10,500 miles from my parents and sister, it'd be nice for me if they had developed this and started operating flights between the factory and Sydney. The fastest I can possibly get to my parents' house at the moment - including airport transfers and check-in - is about 30 hours. Getting that total down to three hours would be lovely.

 

Yes, but think of the fare. I'm not sure a second mortgage would cover it.

 

Honestly, when I'm sitting in economy with a sore arse and cramping legs after 14 hours on planes and six hours in airports, and I'm still only somewhere over Kazakhstan with another 10 hours to go, I would happily take out that second mortgage to switch to a one-hour flight.

More seriously, if it were only about ten times the price of the cheapest economy fare - so somewhere broadly equivalent to First Class - I'd consider it. I wouldn't pay for first class - I rarely even pay for business - to take the same journey in a better seat, but to save all that time and boredom, I'd be tempted. Especially if it involved the bonus of being in space.

 

I'm seeing London-Sydney round trip for $955.

SpaceX's current launch price is close to $US2500 per pound. For the (now seriously outdated) standard passenger weight of 165 pounds, that is about $400,000. That is just one way, without any luggage (or even a seat or pressure suit). And it is only for getting up, not including getting back down to the ground safely.

So figure somewhere in the vicinity of $1 Million round trip, with a slight bit of luggage, and safe landings. That is 1000 times the price of the cheapest current economy fare. Though with economies of scale, it may well come to down to just 100X or so.

 

[dup]

 

Yes - I've just paid a bit under US$800 per person for a trip at Easter - Sydney-London-Sydney to visit my parents. With free stopovers in Hanoi on the way there and Ho Chi Minh on the way back. Hooray! It should be fun. My wife and kids are looking forward to it too. The girls want to do a side trip from HCMC to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat, so I'll see whether we can do that.

I wish I was an outdated standard passenger weight.

Virgin Galactic is offering sub-orbital flights for $250,000, with very little in the way of economies of scale. Getting into space would appear to be at least as much of a challenge as getting from Sydney to London.

So if this plan takes off - and after 30+ years of HOTOL promises I have my doubts - within a few years prices might fall to sub-US$10K, and even more likely sub-US$20K, levels, especially if Australia ever gets round to using its massive solar resources to product cheap hydrogen. At that stage, it'd be competing with at least first class and possibly business on the better airlines.

 

The primary energy cost of reaching low earth orbit is speed, not altitude. While the pure energy cost of speed is merely a square function, the fuel cost of chemical rockets is worse, an exponential function. The functions are similar for vehicle speeds below the rocket engine exhaust speed, but diverge rapidly above that exhaust speed.

Virgin's suborbital flights appear to be aiming for 4 km/s. Low Earth orbital speed is about 28 km/s.

 

As you said later in the thread, oh to be just of standard passenger weight! But I once got an offer from a certain British Airline of two for one on business class flight club world. We took a trip to Boston MA to see bisco, but as neither of us knew of each other then, we failed to make contact, but I digress. Biz class seats/beds were so good and 6 his of no screaming children, sigh! If only I could repeat that offer!

 

I remember seeing similar proposals by NASA and Boeing through the years.

At the end, a London to New York trip on the Concorde was £4350(yay, learned something new today) for one way.

The SpaceX is a rocket that can reach orbit. For an ICB flight, it doesn't need to reach such speeds or altitude, so would carry less fuel, cutting weight and cost. With something like the HOTOL, the hybrid engine can use atmospheric oxygen at lower levels, further cutting the oxidizer portion of the fuel needed to be hauled around.

It won't be cheap, and total luggage might be limited to a bare essentials bag per passenger, but it might come to pass. Other luggage can be shipped to old, slow way, or in a faster, cheaper to run, unmanned sub orbital plane(don't pack anything fragile).

 

The claim of one hour, city to city, anywhere on earth, means that it must reach orbit-like speed. Unless it takes a more direct underground route through the earth.

Do remember that at full orbit speed, the cruise portion of the journey half way around the planet is 45 minutes. But it takes significant additional time to get up to speed, and back down to rest, without crushing the passengers from excessive g forces, putting the off-ground portion of the journey to essentially a full hour.

If you save fuel by cutting speed, then you must discard the one hour goal.

 

Correction of a late night math error: orbital speed is just short of 8 km/s.

Rocket exhaust speeds are generally in the 3.5-4.5 km/s range, so the fuel cost still means climbing well up the steep curve of an exponential function.

 

Where did the hour statement come from?
The OP article only mentions, "A promotional video says the London-New York journey would take 29 minutes." with a quote from Musk that most long trips now would only require an half hour.

 

I took it from the title of this very thread.

 

Which I saw, but went looking for some more details in the link for the first time today.

SpaceX's plan is to have a single rocket model that is 100% reusable for all their jobs, and have higher volume use of the rocket for earth to earth flights to help bring down total costs.

 

Thanks for these posts.

It would certainly make sense to stick to hand-luggage only for these flights, and have your heavy stuff follow you.

It works well enough in Japan.

 

A long bungee cord should do the trick.