On Sep. 29 at the International Astronautic Congress in Adelaide, Australia, Elon Musk unveiled a new spacecraft as SpaceX continues to set its sights on Mars. Dubbed the BFR, the vehicle can carry 150 tons of cargo into orbit and is almost entirely re-usable.
Musk hasn’t designed the vehicle solely for Mars or the moon. Toward the end of his address, Musk said that he plans to use the BFR for earth-bound travel too. In his vision of the future, humans will travel from New York to Paris in 30 minutes, or from London to Hong Kong in 34 minutes—sitting inside the same rocket that could potentially propel them to another planet.
“If we’re building this thing to go to the moon and Mars, why not go to other places as well?” he asked the audience. He then played an animated video illustrating a future wherein people hop on a spacecraft to travel across the globe in minutes.
Musk detractors will likely find this among the most far-fetched proposals the entrepreneur has ever touted, and will write it off as yet another marketing stunt. His supporters, as usual, will continue to wait patiently to see if his ambitions turn into reality.
In this rocket-propelled future, how many minutes away from your dream destination are you? Below is the full list of travel time estimates Musk presented in his video, matched against their real-life travel time via plane. Quartz reached out to SpaceX to ask how it calculated these estimates but did not receive an immediate reply.
Trip | Distance | Flight Time | Musk’s Time |
---|---|---|---|
Hong Kong to Singapore | 2568km | 3h 41m | 22m |
Los Angeles to Toronto | 3498km | 4h 37m | 25m |
Los Angeles to New York | 3979km | 5h 11m | 25m |
Los Angeles to Honolulu | 4113km | 5h 20m | 25m |
Bangkok to Dubai | 4909km | 6h 17m | 27m |
Tokyo to Singapore | 5364km | 6h 49m | 28m |
London to Dubai | 5503km | 6h 58m | 29m |
London to New York City | 5546km | 7h 1m | 29m |
New York to Paris | 5840km | 7h 24m | 30m |
Honolulu to Tokyo | 6144km | 7h 44m | 30m |
Tokyo to Delhi | 5916km | 7h 28m | 30m |
Melbourne to Singapore | 6040km | 7h 36m | 30m |
Sydney to Singapore | 6300km | 7h 55m | 31m |
Los Angeles to London | 8769km | 10h 49m | 32m |
Los Angeles to Tokyo | 8764km | 10h 49m | 32m |
London to Hong Kong | 9641km | 11h 31m | 34m |
London to Cape Town | 9693km | 11h 34m | 34m |
Sydney to Tokyo | 7841km | 10h 3m | 35m |
Los Angeles to Buenos Aires | 9873km | 12h 7m | 35m |
Los Angeles to Shanghai | 10427km | 12h 46m | 36m |
Sydney to Delhi | 10446km | 12h 47m | 36m |
New York to Tokyo | 10843km | 13h 15m | 37m |
Sydney to Johannesburg | 11037km | 13h 29m | 37m |
Delhi to San Francisco | 12395km | 15h 5m | 40m |
Sydney to Dubai | 12057km | 14h 41m | 40m |
Los Angeles to Adelaide | 13165km | 15h 59m | 42m |
Delhi to Auckland | 12516km | 15h 13m | 45m |
Sydney to Athens | 15324km | 18h 32m | 47m |
New York to Sydney | 16032km | 19h 22m | 49m |
Los Angeles to Johannesburg | 16724km | 20h 11m | 50m |
Sydney to Zurich | 16586km | 20h 1m | 50m |
Sydney to London | 17039km | 20h 33m | 51m |