- SpaceX’s rocket Starship could also be used for travel to destinations on Earth
- Point-to-point rocket travel on earth could dramatically reduce flight times
- It may take less than an half an hour to get from London to Shanghai or New York
- This will erase long-haul flights and be worth £15bn a year by 2030, say experts
Long-haul flights in a rocket could soon make plane travel on Earth virtually obsolete, an investment firm suggests.
A trip from London to New York would only take 29 minutes and less than one hour to Sydney on Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship.
Getting from point-to-point on Earth by travelling through outer-space could ‘cannibalise’ the current market for journeys lasting over 10 hours.
Swiss firm UBS predicts that the market of point-to-point rocket travel will be worth £15 billion ($19.7bn) a year by 2030.
The company also claims that the space tourism industry will be worth £2.3 billion ($3bn) by 2030.
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Long-haul flights in a rocket will soon wipe out plane travel on Earth, said UBS analysts. And it would only take a predicted 29 minutes from London to New York and less than one hour to Sydney
The future of long-distance air travel on earth will feature rockets entering the upper atmosphere before returning to Earth, said the financial experts.
Such high-speed travel via outer space’ represents a very lucrative market for the likes of SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, who are competing in a space tourism race.
Jarrod Castle and Myles Walton, analysts with UBS, said: ‘Although some might view the potential to use space to service the long-haul travel market as science fiction, we think there is a large market.’
‘While space tourism is still at a nascent phase, we think that as technology becomes proven, and the cost falls due to technology and competition, space tourism will become more mainstream.’
For longer haul flights such as London to Sydney, which can currently take 23 hours, a rocket would take less than an hour.
Space tourism to Mars and other planets will also become a reality, they said, with hotels signing up to build outposts in space stations.
Analysts predict that the wider space industry, which is currently worth around £300 billion ($400bn) billion today will rise to £610 billion ($805bn) by 2030.
