Lol

So people on reddit did some math on it. A BFR could fit ~600 people in business class conditions. Fuel costs would be ~$200k with todays technology. So ~$333/person in fuel costs. Add some costs for the rocket, the rocketport, service, customs etc.

I assume people would be willing to pay a decent premium for 50min vs 15h flights, I have done a few flights with stopovers in Dubai/Qatar around 20h and they are not super fun. And it will be some novelty factor at least in the first few years. So I could easily see myself paying $5k for a safe BFR instead of a $2k business class ticket.

As for technical feasibility of safely landing BFRs I think we have to give SpaceX the benefit of doubt as they have managed to land rockets 16/16 times now starting from scratch. As for if they can pull off investments it seems that they are well funded and I assume more whales will be giving them more money in the future.

There are some questions if other countries will allow these warheads flying over their territory. Laws don't generally apply at these altitudes and many routes don't pass over other countries, such as LA->Tokyo, London->NY.

As for if it is relevant for TSLA. They have the same CEO, Musk also holds a lot of TSLA shares and if SpaceX succeeds I assume a lot of PR will spill over. So it seems pretty relevant for this thread.

No one will pay $5k for such a ticket. Sorry but this is nuts. Business class in itself is not a growth business. Prices are going down and pressure increases on airlines to offer cheaper fares. Paying $5k to save 14 hours is certainly not an option for people. The Concorde wasn't ultra popular and it offered time savings. If the price is not competitive to current economy prices than no one will use it. Paying $10k for a return ticket is absurd. Who would be able to afford that? Certainly not 600 people at the same time.

16/16 minus the crashes? Or 16 in a row?

Agree it is definitely a novelty

People wouldn't pay 5k for a rocket flight halfway around the world? Are you ****ing kidding me? Many many people would want to do this.

I'd snap do $5k to save 14 hours and I am sure I am not the only person in the world that values my time at more than $400 per hour. People already routinely pay 1 or 2k extra to save 3-5 hours on transatlantic/transpacific flights. Some of that is avoiding the hassle of layovers but I am absolutely certain there are tons of people willing to pay 5k to save 14 hours of their time.

And that ignores the novelty of going halfway around the world on a ****ing rocketship.

I mean ffs people paid more than 5k for a concorde ticket.

Yeah, I thought about the novelty factor but that won't carry the industry. It's the repeat customers that will matter.

That said, I did hear from someone in the defense industry (former engineer now responsible for the sales of a very specific essential material that her employer apparently has a monopoly on) that the space tourism people don't think commercial flights are viable any time soon. Consensus seems to be there is no way they'll be able to get enough countries/airports to sign on to get commercial flights going.

In the short and medium term at least, they expect to take off and land at the same air(space?)port. The problem is then we're relying on one off customers to carry the whole industry. In effect those customers would be financing beta testing programs as the rocket companies race to become the first commercial spaceliner manufacturer.

Come to think of it, Elon Musk did sign millions of customers up to beta test electric/self-driving vehicles.

Just waiting for him to do something blatantly incompetent/fraudulent that results in killing a bunch of people on his rocket ship.

600 people at once, i.e. same place, same time? I highly doubt that. Sure, people will do it and there will be customers but certainly not enough to profitably run this.

You are the absolute exception. Also, we are talking about a regular thing here. I am a 100% certain that a lot of people would do that once but not all over again. If marriages had to happen every year people wouldn't spend tens of thousands of dollars. As it is now, they do but this is not a repeat customer (I guess you alluded to this).

Not sure why everyone is talking about $5k, I said that I would pay that, not that SpaceX would charge that. Elon said ~same price as economy class and reddit said $333 for fuel.

Elon says a lot of things. Almost none of them are rooted in reality or truth. He's a master of "alternative facts".

Tom price already pre ordered a dozen flights

musk is a propaganda master. you know things are stagnant or not going well when he starts talking about colonizing other planets and other pet projects that are pure fantasy at this point

when musk tells you he has a revolutionary plan for the future you certainly should be skeptical of the numbers. i mean its not like his vision for tesla isn't burning through billions year after year. ok he's got a plan to transport people around the world in the time it takes to enjoy a coffee for regular air fair rates. should probably check the fine print to see how many billions or trillions in debt over how many decades make that a reality

i would be as excited as anyone for 1 hour travel worldwide and im rooting for musk to torch other peoples money to make that happen

heltok,
Since fuel is $200K/flight, why does a reusable rocket cost $40 million/flight?

Those "some costs" that you add are 100x the cost of fuel for a resuable rocket, and that's when taking shortcuts on safety/reliability to bring down cost.

You're looking at, currently, 300x times the cost of fuel for a safe rocket, safe as in "you only die 1 time in 100"
And this is not including advanced fitout for passengers, the rocket itself, the rocket port, the vast assistive technology needed (how do passengers board and get strapped in if it's 600/rocket? Seats need to spin 180 degrees during the flight. Have special cushioning and harnesses. Etc. Way way more expensive fitout that a plane. And way more expensive maintenance.

Also, 30 minutes isn't a real comparison. Checking in, loading up, unloading, safety tests, etc, and you're looking at 3 hours minimum total. This compared to about 9 hours including these for London to New York. A huge improvement, but not that great.

The Concorde went out of business with this profile:

Which is not that different to a rocket when you include the "nuisance" time at each end.

Then you have the Concorde 2 currently being built:

Which is a far superior design (supersonic flight is >>>>>>> superior to ICBMs in lower cost and reliability profile). SpaceX's video is cute, but it's BS.

I will say it could work for time-critical cargo. That would be cool. Hardly the stuff cult promotional videos are made of, though. I'd definitely pay $5K to get a box of freshly picked mangosteens from Malaysia to Paris in winter.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of people everyday pay ~5k for business class seats from NY to Asia, 10k+ for first class.

Most of them are indeed frequent flyers. Many take the same flight multiple times a year

The thing is, these niche services piggyback off a vast and very expensive infrastructure, paid for by the volume of regular flights. Airplane manufacturing, airports, maintenance, customer services, terminal services, have enormous economies of scale paid for and made viable by and subsidized by the hordes and often their taxes. The business and first class seats piggyback off this.

What pays for this infrastructure in a wealthy-only service?

That’s a big part of why even dreamers mostly think the near term end game for rockets is space tourism and commercial flight is way in the future.

Seriously have people not heard of business customers? Businesses would absolutely pay top dollar to keep their employees from being on a plane for 24 hour trips around the world.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

We will see. Meanwhile:
https://electrek.co/2017/09/29/tesla...ring-problems/

Norway is having a record month:


Also, 1134 upside down is hell, as in being in production hell. Not sure if intended or not =)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_class_airline

This is a pretty good proxy of the demand of such a service. If prices were $5k (significantly more than round trip business class flights today), demand would be pretty low. This notion that people are paying premium dollar to save 14 hours is unrealistic imo.

Why would someone pay $6k more to save a day of travelling? You can get a lot of stuff done in business class today. It's not dead time. You can work, sleep and drink there. People enjoy themselves and companies don't gain that much by having someone save a few hours of travel. A lot of time on the aircraft can be utilized today.

Evidence suggests otherwise. Also, being on a plane for 24 hours is not completely unproductive.

Those business airlines failed because they didn’t save that much time so rather than wait an hour or two, you could just take a flight that takes an hour or two longer.

Vast majority of the evidence is business flyers pay a lot to save time and hassle. You could go to Expedia.com now and look for flights to Hong Kong or Shanghai and look at price differentials between flights of different lengths. You just vastly underestimate the number of business/first class flyers. We aren’t even counting the millions of private jet flights per year.

On flight time, even if not completely dead, is a lot less billable than face to face client time.

How'd that business model work out?