By Prarthana Mitra
Elon Musk on Wednesday announced on Twitter, his plans to combine The Boring Companys underground hyperloop with SpaceXs BFR (Big Falcon Rocket) which could potentially create a global transport system that can get you anywhere on the map in approximately an hour.
Here’s what happened
SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell announced an update to the Earth-to-Earth transportation plan, unveiled in September last year, in a conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson in March.
The first BFR will seat about 100 passengers and projected to complete a dozen trips per day, according to Shotwell. A ticket from New York City to Shanghai will cost roughly $2,000, she said, adding that the system should be ready for use in about ten years.
According to Electrek, the system based on spacecraft models built to colonise Mars, is similar to an aircraft with point-to-point travel on earth, but it goes through space at a significantly higher speed (27,000 km/h), which drastically reduces flight time. The biggest challenge they face right now to get people to the spaceports quickly.
Soon after TED tweeted an excerpt of the conversation with Shotwell, tech luminary Elon Musk replied that The Boring Companys underground hyperloop would join hands with SpaceX’s rockets to further shorten people’s itineraries by delivering them faster to the BFR launch ports. So, that comes to a 30 or 40-minute ride on the BFR followed by a fifteen-minute cruise in the subterranean hyperloop from downtown to the rocket launch site.
Why you should care
This verges on futuristic transportation technology with none of the gimmicks and dystopian fallout we have come to expect from science fiction. In fact, it could be the first step towards revolutionising modern transport with its innumerable flaws and potholes.
The eco-friendly Earth-to-Earth transport system could someday even replace overseas shipping and facilitate a massive drop in atmospheric pollutants.
Present yardsticks of time management and productivity will go for a toss, once people are able to travel from one corner of the earth in no time at all. It thus takes a little bit of rocket science to harness the full potential of the system, but none at all to fathom its implications on the globalisation of labour economy and workforce.