Eventually, the SpaceX SuperHeavy Booster / Starship spacecraft could deliver people almost anywhere on the globe in under an hour.
It is not a short term goal, but when they do, these hours and hours plane trips are going to suffer.
“Eventually, the SpaceX SuperHeavy Booster / Starship spacecraft could deliver people almost anywhere on the globe in under an hour.”
You don’t even need super heavy for anti podial sub orbital hops a stretched Starship with 9 raptor vs 6 can do it with 15 tonnes of people or cargo.
The version we came up with used flip out wings like the Soviet era shuttle booster recovery plan to fly down and land on wheels horizontally at any airport in the world with a 10000 ft runway, inside the skirt at the top in the plasma wake of the heat shield were two F101 jet engines that were set up to burn the 2% fuel remaining after the sub orbital burn to mach 20 enough fuel is left for a 200 mile glide/ powered sub sonic flight path.
Why not vertical landing burn after a belly flop?
First off that’s a 3-5 G suicide burn most normies are not going to be med cert to fly such a vomit machine where you also go from seat up face first deceleration to a rapid flip to past vertical and head down feet up 3 G suicide burn to a hover for a huge dedicated tower to catch you. Yeah no.
Our way is face up 1.5G horizontal and nose up 40 degrees AOA reentry followed by face up nose slightly up 5
-10 degrees AOA glide down to FL350 then jet engine start and powered airline like flight to a soft airplane like landing at 150 kn those engines are a rounding error in the mass starship and the wings are too made from carbon fiber and titanium hinges they flip flat and inside slots in the wake top side they never see plasma or heat they are tucked inside the thermal protection and only deploy at mach 2 or less and then go subsonic well offshore no huge sonic booms over cities with a direct belly flop ballistic approach that starship currently uses.
The mass of the wings, engines and landing gear is LESS than the fuel reserves needed to suicide burn to a hover such large heavy mass. Air lift will always win vs rocket thrust against earth’s gravity well every single time.
Our way is point to point anywhere you have a 4 acre launch pad with a 10000Dr runway near it,the acoustic exclusion zone of 9 raptors is 4 miles for 33 its much larger and you need a dedicated launch tower with 9 raptors you need a water cooled concrete pad and a pad ring to set on above it plus the empty starship is light enough for a dedicated heavy lift mobile crane to loft right up to the ring for fueling.