I think everyone participating in this SpaceX forum is familiar with the idea that Elon sprung on us at the end of his IAC presentation last year on the revised BFR plan; using it for transporting large numbers of people from one point on earth to another, or what I call “EP2P”. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, go to the 41 minute point in the video on this page Mars .
In this article, SpaceX’s president says we’ll be able to take a rocket to Shanghai — or Mars — ‘within a decade’ , a startling claim caught my eye. From the article, quote: “How could travel by rocket cost so little? Shotwell said the efficiency would come from being fast enough to be able to operate a route a dozen or so times a day, whereas a long-haul airplane often only does one flight per day.”
If she really said “a dozen or so times a day” and that means using the same rocket on that route, that seemed impossible to me simply because of the time needed for refueling. Then I realized that a newly fueled 1st stage will be ready at the landing site. The 2nd stage will have used only a small amount of fuel for landing but probably not used any fuel earlier in the flight; the 1st stage will do all the work needed to achieve the needed suborbital trajectory. So perhaps starting the day with a fully fueled 2nd stage it won’t need to be refueled until it has been used for a dozen or more landings?
So to accomplish 12 flights a day using a single BFR, it has to land, disembark the passengers, and load new passengers in just two hours. I can imagine that is achievable.
In this article, SpaceX’s president says we’ll be able to take a rocket to Shanghai — or Mars — ‘within a decade’ , a startling claim caught my eye. From the article, quote: “How could travel by rocket cost so little? Shotwell said the efficiency would come from being fast enough to be able to operate a route a dozen or so times a day, whereas a long-haul airplane often only does one flight per day.”
If she really said “a dozen or so times a day” and that means using the same rocket on that route, that seemed impossible to me simply because of the time needed for refueling. Then I realized that a newly fueled 1st stage will be ready at the landing site. The 2nd stage will have used only a small amount of fuel for landing but probably not used any fuel earlier in the flight; the 1st stage will do all the work needed to achieve the needed suborbital trajectory. So perhaps starting the day with a fully fueled 2nd stage it won’t need to be refueled until it has been used for a dozen or more landings?
So to accomplish 12 flights a day using a single BFR, it has to land, disembark the passengers, and load new passengers in just two hours. I can imagine that is achievable.