SpaceX to build floating spaceports for rockets to the Moon and Mars, and hypersonic Earth travel

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By Matthew Griffin Future Transport 20th June 2020

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Elon Musk is inventing numerous industries and has ambitions to create the first human colony on Mars, and he’s getting closer to realising his goals.

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A while ago I discussed how Elon Musk and SpaceX were planning on, on the one hand build a colony of over one million people on Mars starting from 2024, and on the other transport people around the world at over Mach 25 using reusable passenger rockets. And now SpaceX has announced it’s hiring experts in “Offshore Operations in Brownsville,” the purpose of which is “to help the company develop and build floating spaceports that will provide launch sites for the company’s Super Heavy-class launch vehicles.” SpaceX will use these larger rockets to get its forthcoming large payload rockets to the moon, to Mars — and also for point-to-point travel right here on Earth, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk himself.

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Musk said on Twitter that this was the purpose behind the new job posting, which was originally spotted by Dan Paasch. SpaceX has previously shown concepts of its forthcoming Super Heavy rocket booster, paired with its Starship spacecraft, launching for hypersonic Earth travel — which would reduce the trip time for long-haul flights to merely a couple of hours. Those concepts have thus far consisted only of renders, however, and we didn’t know what the plan was in terms of how and from where those spacecraft would launch until today.

SpaceX is building floating, superheavy-class spaceports for Mars, moon & hypersonic travel around Earth https://t.co/zLJjz43hKw

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 16, 2020

Starship and Super Heavy are primarily being developed to help SpaceX and Musk realize their goal of delivering humans to Mars, in order to colonize that and other interstellar destinations, including the moon to “make humans an interstellar species.” But while those goals may seem out of reach to most people, the company’s aims of using the same fully reusable spacecraft to greatly decrease the cost of point-to-point supersonic travel here on Earth are likely to be much more relevant.

Anywhere on Earth in under an hour

Point-to-point space-based transportation is not a new concept, and others beyond SpaceX are working on developing ways to make this happen.

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The idea is that by traveling at the edge of, or beyond Earth’s atmosphere, you can greatly reduce the fuel cost and duration of flight — traveling the distance between New York and Paris, for instance, in under an hour. In fact, SpaceX claimed during a presentation in 2017 that point-to-point transportation with its Starship could reach any city on Earth from any other city in less than an hour.

Timelapse of building the mars Colony

SpaceX has been developing Starship in Texas, near Brownsville where this new job posting is seeking Offshore Operations Engineers. The company has been expanding its testing and development site in the area, and has also sought to increase the resources dedicated to its operations in the state.

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Musk didn’t share much more about the plans, but did allude to the fact that these new “Space ports” could be serviced by autonomous passenger ferries as well as Hyperloops, a futuristic “train in a vacuum tube,” that could transport people to the sites from cities all around the US at speeds of over Mach 1. And after a year or so of talking about it it’s awesome to finally see the plans moving ahead.

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Described by NASA as a "Walking Encyclopaedia of the Future" and one of the world’s most in demand keynote speakers Matthew Griffin, Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm, is a multi-award winning Futurist and strategic foresight expert, author, lecturer, mentor, podcast and YouTube host.

With a distinguished career running global business units at Atos, EMC, and IBM today Matthew helps leaders and titans of industry from all over the world explore the impact of the inter sections of technology, culture, and leadership, then helps them create high performance organisations that can continuously disrupt, outpace, and outthink their competition.

15 times author of the hit series the Codex of the Future series Matthew's ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends on global business, culture, and society has earned him a powerful reputation and a roster of clients that include royal households, world leaders across the G7, G20, and G77, and many of the world's most recognised and exceptional organisations including ABB, Accenture, ABN Amro, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi Group, Coca Cola, Deloitte, Dentons, Disney, Dow, EY, Google, KPMG, Lego, Microsoft, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Nokia, Paramount, PepsiCo, PWC, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, T-Mobile, UBS, Visa, WIRED, WPP and hundreds of others.

Matthew is regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, and his mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.