New way to travel in the future: Rocket travel on Earth vs Cargo berths on a plane

Have you ever imagined travel to another place by ROCKET on Earth? Or have a BED on a plane?

Last year, the CEO of SpaceX, Elon MUSK, got a lot of attention because of his video proposing intercities travel on Earth using a ROCKET that is designed for outer space. The video shows that Space X is planning to make long-distance trips no longer that ½ hour.

(video source: Youtube)

In April 11, 2018, the president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell restated this plan at the TED Conference and believed that the technology needed to achieve this kind of city-to-city travel would be ready “within a decade, for sure.” And her company hopes Mars travel technology will also be complete in the same time.

This is an ambitious plan, but SpaceX seems to be confident. The intercities travel plan by rocket is that using a very large rocket, capable of carrying about 100 people to do point-to-point travel like an aircraft but much faster than a plane. For instance, il will be less than 1 hour flying from NewYork to Shanghai.

Shotwell estimated that the cost of the ticket would be somewhere between business and economy class on a plane. So maybe it cost just in the thousands of dollars. How could it cost so little? Shotwell believes that the revenue generated by a rocket that runs a given route “daily” for more than a dozen times will offset the high operating costs. For reference, as Recode points out, ordinary long-haul airplanes only perform one flight per day. And the routes with rocket will be less than an hour - most of them less than 30 minutes. What a high price/performance ratio! But still it is costly.

I believe that all people who often travel long distances will like this news. I just hope that this kind of rocket travel will be environmentally friendly, since it uses a lot of fuel and generate space junk. Anyway, this will greatly improve travel experience.

Compared to the rocket travel on Earth within ten years, another way of improving customers experience - the cargo sleeper berths for Airbus A330 jets available to airlines by 2020 are more realistic and more desirable. This new way for passengers to stretch out on a plane is created by the european airplane maker and France’s Zodiac Aerospace. The berths are placed on the cargo floor and “easily interchangeable” with cargo containers.

As showed in the following photos designed by the companies, rows of double-decker beds on either side of a passageway. In the meantime, the berths cloud also be changed for a large area for kids and family, medical care or meetings.

(photo source: http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/11/news/airbus-cargo-hold-beds/index.html)

(photo source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/2ENXwq4czThlKmk18AUd0w)

Passengers will pay an extra fee for a “bed ticket” (price to be determined by airlines) after getting on the plane, and then they can have a good night's sleep after the plane taking off and before landing.

A bright and beautiful future for travel, right? 😉😉

Sources:
https://www.recode.net/2018/4/11/17227036/flight-spacex-gwynne-shotwell-space-ted-conference-interview
http://news.cnfol.com/it/20180413/26279646.shtml
http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/11/news/airbus-cargo-hold-beds/index.html
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/2ENXwq4czThlKmk18AUd0w

By Xiaoqing & Wenhong