In a rocket, a flight from New York to Paris would take twenty-nine minutes. – Pxhere/CC0
In a rocket, a flight from New York to Paris would take twenty-nine minutes. – Pxhere/CC0
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Transport
“ I travel often. I would love to go from my home in Texas to Paris in an hour. It would be fun and effective. » These remarks made by Gwynne Shotwell, number 2 of SpaceX, have all the makings of a bad joke. This is not the case, as pointed out The world in a study published on 15 December. According to the evening newspaper, Elon Musk’s space company is striving to use its rockets, originally designed to go to Mars, to transport soldiers, military equipment and even passengers to Earth. It thus participates, in the same way as other companies (including Jeff Bezos’ aerospace group), in an investigation protocol launched in 2020 by USTransCom.
From a 2020 SpaceX promotional video unearthed by The world, such a service could, for example, connect New York with Paris in twenty-nine minutes. Barely longer for New York-Shanghai: thirty-nine minutes. The speed of these rockets – 27,000 km/h – is enough to make you dizzy. As for the cost of such flights, SpaceX hopes for the long term “ go down to $1 million » according to the daily, which would amount to tickets at $1,000 each in the event that these machines carry 1,000 passengers.
The issue of aviation seems to bother Elon Musk in any case: as Franceinfo points out, Twitter – of which the billionaire recently became head – has suspended the accounts of several journalists. Some had commented on the suspension of the @ElonJet account on December 14th. This included the trips on the private jet of the richest man in the world. As a reminder, 50 % of aviation-related carbon emissions come from 1 % of the world’s population.
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