Play

Sure it’ll take you to Mars, but tech revolutionary Elon Musk – who seems determined to control the future – and his space transport venture SpaceX also want to whisk you across earth in a jiffy.

After announcing that SpaceX will build smaller rocket ships than originally planned, and earlier, in order to cut the costs of going to Mars, Musk said that forthcoming mega-rocket could also be used for Earth-to-Earth transportation. Code-named BFR (short for Big F***ing Rocket), it will, apparently, take passengers “anywhere on Earth in under an hour” for around the same price as an economy airline ticket.

The video (above) explains how this will be possible. Set in a (very near) future, the journey starts in New York City at 6:30 am, with people boarding a rocket-shaped vessel which launches into orbit around the Earth. It reaches a floating landing pad near Shanghai at 6:39 am, coming back to the surface in much the same way as the Falcon 9 rocket. (A regular flight over the 12,000 km distance would take approximately 15 hours.)

All this is purely theoretical at the moment, but Musk did say that he hoped to begin construction on the rocket in the next six to nine months.