
Gwynne Shotwell: SpaceX's Plan to Fly You Across the Globe in 30 Minutes [video] - logancg
https://www.ted.com/talks/gwynne_shotwell_spacex_s_plan_to_fly_you_across_the_globe_in_30_minutes
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aphextron
Rocket based travel will never ever ever happen on a widespread scale simply
because of the G forces involved. Passengers on an airliner will begin feeling
uncomfortable at around 1.2 G's and > 20 degrees of bank angle. The thought of
subjecting regular paying passengers to 3+ G's and a full 360 degrees of
pitch/roll is absurd. It could definitely be a niche thing for people that are
physically fit, but this just isn't the way to go for high speed
transportation. More traditional airframes and scramjets are far more likely
to make hypersonic travel a reality.

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ceejayoz
If John Glenn could do a Shuttle flight at 77, I suspect you're overstating
the difficulties here. People voluntarily subject themselves to 3+ Gs and 360
degrees pitch/roll at amusement parks daily, with fairly minimal levels of
physical fitness being required.

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jjeaff
If the full 30 minute flight is like a roller coaster, I would be green by the
time we got there and probably have a full puke bag. But I'd still prefer that
to a 12 hr long haul flight in coach.

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samastur
If you could afford flying on a rocket, I bet you can also afford flying
first-class. Would that alter your preference?

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bmcusick
The main thing I'm thinking of is noise pollution. You think living near an
airport is loud? I cannot even imagine what living near a BFR spaceport would
be like. For coastal cities maybe it would be worth it to build a landing pad
on an ocean platform some miles out to sea, but what about for cities like
Atlanta or Beijing? There's nowhere around them to build that isn't already a
suburb.

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ceejayoz
I'd expect a city like Atlanta to be served by an off-shore landing zone, with
high speed rail (hyperloop!) as the connection.

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XR0CSWV3h3kZWg
Atlanta is very open to running public transit lanes into the area and land
acq is cheap OTP. /s

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WhompingWindows
I think SpaceX should just sell this service to military clients. The other
comments here are talking about noise pollution, G-forces, bank angles, and
other negative downsides of the service. However, if you have a bunch of
active-duty, trained personnel who need to get across the globe ASAP, this is
something I could see the military paying for. Moreover, most bases are not
directly next to large population centers, which helps with the noise
pollution argument.

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larrydag
As a business model I think SpaceX should be a manufacturer and not in the
transportation business akin to Boeing or Airbus. There is a ton of logistics
involved in transporting people globally. Of course there is the safety issues
as well.

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sandworm101
>> safety issues as well.

And vomit. 4+G on launch. Freefall during cruise. 5+ G on reentry. Give me the
first class ticket on a BA flight any day.

~~~
Ajedi32
That sounds amazing actually. As of today, I'd consider a few minutes of micro
gravity to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. If that ever becomes something
you can experience for the price of an airline ticket, I'd consider the ride
itself to be worth the price of admission all on its own.

Obviously not for everyone, but you don't really need to be able to service
_everyone_ to be profitable.

~~~
ksherlock
You can do it today for the price of a reduced-gravity aircraft ticket
(~$5,000, [https://www.gozerog.com](https://www.gozerog.com))

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jacquesm
Betting against Elon Musk is historically unprofitable but if there was one of
those bets saying that SpaceX will never actually field this other than for PR
purposes then I'd probably take it.

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ChuckMcM
I'm glad Gwynne is talking about this rather than Elon as I always take what
Elon says with a large grain of "execution" salt (as in sure you can do that
but not when you think you can).

Things will be very different when BFRs are flying regularly. BFRs imply full
reusability, and full reusability implies a short 'cycle' time, which implies
a much greater earth to orbit capacity, with implies a greater supply and more
reliability to orbit, which implies that it stops being crazy to require that
you have three or four launches in a single year to get all of your "stuff"
into orbit.

The logistics of space launch are still crazy. You can launch two rockets in a
weekend using two launch pads but you can't yet launch multiple rockets a week
from the _same_ launch pad.

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hackpert
I think a major point that isn't being talked enough about in public (although
I'm sure people in SpaceX have considered it before coming up with numbers)
with the "point-to-point" transport system is simple demand-supply economics.
Sure, let's say they can run 10 100-person flights per day from New York to
Shanghai but do that many people even want to travel that route on that
particular day?

~~~
sounds
More speculation here, I don't have any knowledge on the matter, but...

If the flight time drops from 12 hours to 30 minutes, and prices are in the
same ballpark of $2,000, then there would be more demand.

The execs could all be in Shanghai for the board meeting and some of them
could be back in NYC for dinner.

~~~
bdamm
Not so, due to time zones. Although I fully realize that if you can rocket
out, meet, and rocket back, and go to sleep in the same time zone you woke up
in, it would be a very significant development.

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Animats
This is going to be big with the crowd that has jumbo jets as a personal
airplane.[1]

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-747-8-vip-private-
jet-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-747-8-vip-private-jet-2016-6)

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pjmorris
How do you tell the difference between commercial scheduled rocket flights and
incoming ICBM's?

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Ajedi32
The same way you tell the difference between commercial scheduled airline
flights incoming kamikaze pilots?

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XR0CSWV3h3kZWg
Assume that there aren't commercial scheduled airline flights going straight
through a warzone?

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Ajedi32
Assume there aren't commercial scheduled spaceline flights taking off from
nuclear missile silos.

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XR0CSWV3h3kZWg
I haven't heard of missile defense systems that are capable of determining the
origin of an ICBM while deciding if it should try and take it out.

~~~
jccooper
Infrared boost phase detectors on satellites have been around since the 60s.
The US and Russian detection systems, at least, certainly know the origin of
any ICBMs. There's not many parties that don't have that data and also have
counter-measures.

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Semirhage
What would be the environmental impact of ubiquitous rocket launches for
business travel?

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Symmetry
Not too huge. This person[1] did some math and found that a BFR trip across
the world should take 40% to 240% as much carbon as a regular plane flight.
For short trips this would be worse, though, because a plane's range goes up
almost linearly with fuel use while a rocket's goes up much faster than
linearly.

Rockets that use solid boosters like the Space Shuttle, SLS, or Atlas V do a
good amount of ozone damage as they go up but the ozone damage from cryogenic
propellants of the sort that a BFR uses is pretty small.

[1][https://www.quora.com/Elon-Musk-suggested-that-the-SpaceX-
BF...](https://www.quora.com/Elon-Musk-suggested-that-the-SpaceX-BFR-could-be-
used-for-30-minute-flights-to-the-other-side-of-the-world-at-the-price-of-an-
economy-flight-What-would-be-the-carbon-footprint-per-passenger-equivalent-
and-how-would-it-compare-to-jet-travel)

~~~
byw
Also I'm not sure where SpaceX gets its methane from. If it's from above-
surface sources wouldn't its net carbon contribution essentially be zero?

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et2o
Did a little googling. Methane is primarily obtained from natural gas fields
which are below ground. Atmospheric concentrations are relatively low (on
order of parts per billion) although it is still an important greenhouse gas
(30x more potent than CO2 per ton). There's a lot of ongoing research into
generating CH4 from CO2 using renewable energy but it's relatively energy
intensive to date.

~~~
Semirhage
So there’s noise pollution on a grand scale, it depends on natural gas
extraction or a breakthrough in electrolysis, and it will produce CO2 when
burned in flight. Great. It will also cost a fortune, and even SST isn’t
viable, yet somehow this will be?

I could not be more skeptical.

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jedisct1
Does that mean no food, no snacks during the flight? That sucks.

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Diederich
There would be neither the time nor the inclination for food service. A non-
trivial percentage of passengers will be dealing with nausea during the
thankfully brief 0g float.

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mkirklions
SpaceX is promising something that is feasibly decades away?

Do people still believe in Elon? Or have we figured out these are
advertisements.

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randyrand
He's not promising it. Despite the optimistic language, its a somewhat-
realistic dream that he'd _like_ to do and plans to work on. At least that
seems obvious to me.

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cthulhujr
>This is the only time I've out-visioned Elon ... _I_ want to meet other
people in other solar systems.

You're not out-visioning Elon; it's a petty attempt at one-upmanship. It just
doesn't seem genuine. I want to meet people in other Superclusters. Now she's
been out-visioned!

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igravious
Employee #7 at SpaceX didn't you hear? Relax, they're on the same team.

~~~
AskewEgret
And a really interesting life story. I like how she randomly ended up in the
job:

[https://www.northwestern.edu/magazine/spring2012/feature/roc...](https://www.northwestern.edu/magazine/spring2012/feature/rocket-
maam.html)

> Four years into the job, Shotwell had lunch with a co-worker who had just
> joined the then-startup company SpaceX. They walked by the cubicle of CEO
> Elon Musk. “I said, ‘Oh, Elon, nice to meet you. You really need a new
> business developer,’” Shotwell recalls. “It just popped out. I was bad. It
> was very rude.”

> Or just bold enough to capture Musk’s attention. He called her later that
> day in 2002 and recruited her to be vice president of business development,
> his seventh employee. She wrestled with the decision. “The history of
> startup rocket companies isn’t exactly great,” explains Hughes, SpaceX
> senior vice president and general counsel. “This was not necessarily the
> safest play.”

