Elon Musk’s SpaceX to send rocket to Mars by 2022

New ‘BFR’ vehicle could also take
passengers anywhere on Earth ‘in under and hour’

One-Minute Read

Speaking at the International Astronautical Congress in
Adelaide, Australia, the South African-born billionaire said the
company wants to move “all the resources” it uses on its three
existing vehicles towards building a single rocket that can be sent
on multiple missions.

The new rocket, codenamed ‘BFR’ (‘Big F***ing Rocket’), will be
used for “a cargo mission” to Mars in 2022, says The New York Times, with passenger flights
expected two years after that.

“By that stage, they plan to be able to build a plant on the
surface of Mars that would be able to synthesise fuel for return
journeys back from Mars,” reports The Guardian. 

The BFR could also be used for trips on Earth, the newspaper
says, taking passengers anywhere on the planet “in under an
hour.”

“If you build a ship that’s capable of going to Mars, what if
you take that same ship and go from one place to another on Earth?”
Musk asked. 

The billionaire said passengers could travel from New York to
Shanghai in 39 minutes.

SpaceX has focused on building reusable rockets since its
inception in 2007, with the aim of cutting down production and
servicing costs of vehicles to make space flight more
manageable. 

Last month, the company launched a secret military shuttle
into orbit that the US Air Force says will help develop “reusable”
rockets.

However, Alphr says “it doesn’t take a large
stretch of the imagination to guess that the US is also testing
surveillance technologies”.