Hey this is Warren Redlich! Let's talk
about Starship point-to-point. "The great
thing about going to space is there's no
friction so you can get to most
long-distance places like I said in less
than half an hour. And if we're building
this thing to go to the Moon and Mars
then why not go to other places on Earth
as well." "Basically what we're gonna do
is we're gonna fly BFR like an aircraft
and do point-to-point travel on Earth. So
you can take off from New York City or
Vancouver and fly halfway across the
globe. You'll be on the BFR for
roughly half an hour or 40 minutes." Elon
Musk and Gwynne Shotwell and SpaceX have
a plan to use the Starship platform with
Super-Heavy, or without, to carry people
from places on one point on earth to
another point on earth. "It's crazy. This is never
going to actually happen.
Oh no it's definitely gonna happen. This
is definitely gonna happen." The idea of
Starship or BFR or the Interplanetary
Transport System when Elon Musk first
started talking about this was to take
people from the Earth to Mars. Musk has
also said that this has a residual
capability. If we can take people from
Earth to Mars then we can also take
people from one place on Earth to
another. "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 one earth? For example being able
to travel from Los Angeles California to
Sydney Australia or from San Francisco
California to Tokyo or from New York
City to London. These are all potential
routes for using Starship to get there.
So let's talk about how this might work.
In this video we're gonna talk about
what's practical, how much it will cost,
how it will work, how much money it might
make, problems of this system, benefits
from this system and more. If you know
the basics you can skip ahead there's an
index in the description that gives you
different spots in the video that talk
about different topics. So let's talk
about the big idea. Elon Musk and Gwynne
Shotwell who's the president and COO of
SpaceX both talked about using
the Starship platform to take people
from one place on Earth to another. A
great example of how this could make
life better for a lot of
people is the New York City to
Singapore route.
That is an eighteen and a half hour
non-stop flight and Starship could do it
in less than an hour. It would save
passengers over 17 hours. New York to
Singapore won't happen first. One of the
issues that anything like this faces is
travelling over land.which won't happen
right away. I'm going to discuss that
later in the video. In the short term
think of a different trip: Los Angeles,
California to Sydney, Australia. That one
is completely over water and Los Angeles
to Sydney is a 15 hour non-stop flight.
Starship can do it in less than an hour,
saving passengers over 14 hours in
travel time. Don't just think about
longer trips. Even medium length trips of
6 - 10 hours can be much better with
Starship. Think about Los Angeles to
Shanghai or Tokyo, or San Francisco to
Shanghai or Tokyo. New York City to
London or Lisbon, Portugal. Miami, Florida
to Sao Paulo, Brazil. These are all
shorter flights of maybe six to nine
hours on a regular airplane that
Starship would be able to do in half an
hour without using the Super Heavy
booster. That's another detail I'm going
to talk about shortly. The early versions
of Starship will carry a hundred
passengers in a Business or First-Class
platform. "The first BFR is gonna have
roughly a hundred passengers." Later
versions that could potentially carry up
to 1,000 passengers on long trips. Using
1,000 passengers would spread the cost
of the trip over more people and this
would save more money. I'll be
discussing that later in this video.
Even with a thousand passengers, it
will probably never be as cheap as the
cheapest bargain fare so this is not
gonna be for everyone. There's other
reasons why this is not for everyone. If
you don't like roller coasters this ride
will not be for you. Passengers will face
up to three G's of force on launch
re-entry and landing. There
will be some very difficult moments in
the flight that will be very
uncomfortable for some people.
In the middle of the flight you'll be in
zero gravity, which can cause people to
become nauseous and vomit. Roller
coasters also make people vomit so if
you like roller coasters you may be
comfortable with the zero-g - the entire
experience. Much like ocean travel, roller
coasters
and turbulent airplane flights, this kind
of experience can cause people to feel
sick, vomit or otherwise feel very
uncomfortable. On the plus side for most
of the flight there's no turbulence
because you're out of the atmosphere so
the rocket does not get affected by wind
at all because there's no wind. You won't
be moving around the cabin, not even to
go to the bathroom.
If you think it might be an issue that
you won't be able to handle one hour
strapped into a seat, then you should
probably wear Depends, a popular American
brand name for an adult diaper. You should
wear some kind of adult diaper because
if you're going to have to go to the
bathroom, then you're not going to have
the opportunity. You can't move around
when you're facing 3 G's and
weightlessness in a short flight. As Elon
Musk has said, the passengers will be
strapped in like they're in a roller
coaster ride. There's no flight
attendants walking around the cabin.
There might be zero crew. The flight is
controlled completely by computer. No
human pilot could manage to land a
rocket on their own. The computers have
to do it. The system that operates the
rocket is too complicated for a human to
control. It is controlled by very
sophisticated computers that are
designed for just this purpose and they
work extremely well. Think of Starship
point-to-point as a thrill ride that
gets you where you want to go in an hour
or less. Currently most of these trips
really take you a day or more out of
your life. With Starship point-to-point
you'll be able to travel anywhere in the
world for a day trip. You won't
necessarily want to, but you'll be able
to if you want to. Get on a Starship in
the morning. Fly anywhere in the world.
Fly home that night and sleep in your
own bed. "I'm personally invested in this. I travel a lot and I do not love to travel. 
I would love to get to see my customers
in Riyadh. Leave in the morning and be
back in time to make dinner."
When Elon Musk and SpaceX first started
talking about Starship point-to-point,
the original idea was a two-stage rocket.
The Super-Heavy booster would accelerate
the Starship, the upper stage with the
passengers in it. The Super-Heavy booster
launches the second stage Starship up to
about 50 miles or 80 kilometers in
altitude, accelerating it to about 5000
miles per hour or 8,000 kilometers per
hour. That's about seven times the speed
of sound. Starship's boosters then kick in,
accelerating the rocket up to the speed
of as much as Mach 25, which is 19,000
miles per hour or 30,000 kilometers
per hour. Starship is being launched on a
ballistic path which will deliver the
missile, with you in it or the passengers
in it, to its intended target. Not to blow
up and destroy things. That ballistic
path is designed to bring you back into
the atmosphere at just the right moment
so you'll be able to land at your
destination. On re-entry you'll
experience significant turbulence and
substantial g-forces as the atmosphere
slows down the rocket. After reentry and
you're in the atmosphere the rocket will
gradually slow down more as you approach
your destination. Then there will be
a landing burn which will be again
substantial g-forces landing you at your
destination. So that original idea was a
two-stage rocket.
More recently Elon suggested in a tweet
that Starship alone without Super-Heavy
would be able to do some shorter flights.
The shorter flights would be up to
10,000 kilometers or 6,000 miles or so.
Starship might need a couple extra
engines and more fuel to be able to do
these flights which would mean less room
for passengers. There would be a smaller
maximum number of passengers for these
flights. It wouldn't be able to carry a
thousand people in that configuration.
Top speed for these flights would be
closer to Mach 20, 15,000 miles per hour
or 24,000 km/h. Many of the most common trips are four thousand miles or less,
6,500 kilometers or less. Single stage
flights would cost less because they
would use a lot less fuel and because
you wouldn't have the operational cost
of managing the Super Heavy booster. Let's talk about how much this is going
to cost.
Elon Musk has estimated that a full
Starship - Super Heavy launch into orbit
carrying over a hundred tons of payload
into orbit would cost in the ballpark of
nine hundred thousand dollars in fuel.
That's methane fuel. When you add
everything else in in terms of
operational costs, about two million
dollars to launch that hundred plus tons
into orbit.
"The cost of fuel and oxygen is about $900,000.
If you consider operating costs, about $2 million."
The good news is that human payloads are
much less weight - much less mass - than
orbital payloads that are typically
being launched. While starship can
carry over a hundred tons into orbit, 100
passengers, when you add up their weight,
adds up to about 7 tons.
Not 100 tons but only 7 tons.
When you add in the luggage and
everything else maybe you get to a 10
ton payload for 100 passengers. 1000 passenger flight would be
closer to that full 100 ton payload
although most people think starship will
be able to carry a lot more than 100
tons into orbit. 150 tons or more. In
that initial two-stage configuration
with a lighter payload of only say 7
tons for 100 passengers, the fuel
cost should be a lot less than the cost
for a full orbital launch.
if SpaceX is able to get the total cost
of that Super Heavy - Starship launch
two-stage launch of 100 passengers
going somewhere on earth down to a
million dollars for the flight, that
million dollars divided by 100
people works out to $10,000
a passenger. Adding something for a
profit and you're talking about $12,000
to $15,000 a ticket.
That sounds like a lot. Keep in mind
we're talking about one-way and
first-class passengers will often spend
$10,000 on a flight. Now those people are
able to save a substantial amount of
time, they might very well be willing to
pay $15,000 dollars for that
flight. If SpaceX is able to get 1000 passengers on one of these
flights, that spreads the cost over a
much larger number of people. If it's
a $2 million launch spread over
1000 passengers that's
only $2000 dollars a passenger.
Still a lot of money but down to
$2000 of passenger cost. 
Figure some profit is $2500
for a ticket. When you
compare that to business class flights
or first-class flights it actually
becomes quite reasonable. One of the
potential problems with 1000 passenger
flights is just whether there are
markets that are big enough to support
1000 people. That's another thing
I'm going to be talking about later in
this video.
Think about shorter flights. Let's
talk about Elon's plan to use Starship
alone for flights of under 10,000 km which is about 6,000 miles.
The fuel costs for that might be closer
to $200,000 or $150,000
for that flight.
Your total flight cost might be
around $300,000.
Keep in mind you're not paying for
flight crew or pilots. If you spread that
$300,000 over 100
passengers you get $3000 a person. Add something for
profit it's $4000. That's
a bit more than a typical business class
flight for that distance. But again
you're saving people a huge amount of
time and maybe they'll be willing to pay
for it. Or at least some people will be
willing to pay for it. You're talking
about a $4000 fare for
people to fly from New York City to
London or from Los Angeles to Tokyo. The
cost really starts to make sense if you
think about carrying say 500 passengers
on that single stage Starship and you go
from Los Angeles to Tokyo or Shanghai or
New York City to London. Because now
you're increasing the fuel cost in order
to be able to carry the larger payload.
But let's say that brings the total
flight cost up to $500,000 over 500
passengers. That adds up to only $1,000 a
passenger and cost. Adding in profit
maybe it's $1,500 per passenger for the
fare. That becomes a very reasonable
cost. $1,500 from New York to London is
well below what business class fares
cost now. That could become a very
cost-effective plan. It could be
something that could generate a
lot of business. 
Staffing costs are much lower for this
because there's no flight crew.
There's no pilots. There's no flight
attendants. There's just ground crew. I think the biggest question and the
question that motivated me to make this
video is how big is the market for
Starship carrying all these passengers
point-to-point on Earth? Elon talked
about carrying 1000 passengers
point-to-point. Gwynne Shotwell talked
about making 10 flights each way per
day. "I can do this trip in half an hour
to an hour, I can do dozens of these a
day." SpaceX
is taking a bunch of people from one
place on Earth to another place on Earth.
There's really a question of how
many people are making that trip from
say New York to London or from New York
to Singapore or from London to Sydney
Australia. How big is the market
- number of people that want to
make
a trip on a daily basis? If you're gonna
carry 1000 people on this flight
and you're gonna make this flight 10
times a day, that means you need 10,000
people who want to make that trip. I
wasn't sure how many people make these
trips that would support having these
trips going in the first place. When you
look at airline routes and
which routes are the most traveled. 
There's a list of the top 50 on
Wikipedia and almost all of them are
2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) or less.
These are short trips that you wouldn't
bother using Starship for. So some of the
most common air travel destinations - I
think there's only two that are more
than 2,000 kilometers and only one of
them is close to 4,000 kilometers. So the
vast majority of popular flights are
shorter flights and there's no real role
for Starship on those. It just
doesn't save enough time. It's not really
practical to make those trips. Even when
you look at the busiest so-called
long-haul routes which are long flights
many of them are 4,000 kilometers (2,500
miles or so). They're just not that long
so Starship's advantage is not that big
on those flights. When I look at the
numbers the busiest route that seems to
make sense is New York City to London
this is a 5,500 kilometer flight takes
about six and a half hours and there are
14,000 flights a year between JFK M
London Heathrow JFK is New York City's
main airport main International Airport
London Heathrow is London's main
International Airport that 14,000
flights a year works out to about 40
flights a day if each of those flights
carries 50 business class passengers
that works out to 2,000 passengers a day
so even with that if you were gonna do a
thousand passengers you'd only have two
trips a day now a typical one-way
non-stop business fair between New York
and London costs about five thousand
dollars so the four thousand dollar fare
for a starship to make that trip really
makes a lot of sense you're getting
people there a lot faster and it's
actually costing less than a business
class fare when I talk about the 14,000
flights a day there's a lot of travel
between New York and London that isn't
on nonstop flights between JFK and
Heathrow there are two stop flights and
one stop flights there are flights from
Newark Airport LaGuardia
London Stansted London Gatwick when you
add all that together it's probably more
than 2000 significantly more than 2,000
passengers a day but it's not that much
more and the people who are willing to
take those 1 stop or to stop flights to
save money are less likely to be willing
to pay for the Lugg of the convenience
of the starship quick trip but when I
run the numbers there should be enough
volume to support New York to London
starship single-stage flight going maybe
five times a day each way it gets more
difficult when you look at other city
pairs
another popular long-haul route is Tokyo
to Honolulu non-stop business fairs
between Tokyo and Honolulu are typically
less than $2,000 there are 21 flights a
day making that 8-hour trip so it might
be harder to sell enough $4,000 fares to
sustain the volume to support many
starship flights if you increase the
number of passengers per flight you get
to 500 passengers you're lowering the
cost of the fare substantially but now
you have the problem of whether there's
enough volume to support 500 you know
how many flights are you going to
support with 500 passengers a day there
just aren't as many people who are
making that trip in the first place it
is possible that I'm under estimating
the amount of traffic between city pairs
because I'm only looking primarily at
nonstop flights there are many routes
that use connecting cities one or two
stop trips that a lot of people are
taking and starships speed advantage
would make it even more attractive to
those people because they're taking much
longer amounts of time to make their
trip at the same time those people are
probably people who are looking for
bargain fares so they might be less
willing to pay the extra cost for the
starship trip there's a positive side to
this that when you get to five hundred
or thousand passengers on starship and
you're lowering the fares and still
making this a very fast trip it could
conceivably expand the market for
international travel and really make the
world smaller really make the world feel
smaller connect more people for more
places together so that's an optimistic
side but I still think this is a big
question does the money work are there
enough passengers willing to pay the
money that its costs to make these trips
to be able to support starship working I
think if you do it at the small scale of
100 passengers and they're really rich
people yes there's some passengers
to support a small number of trips if
you're trying to make it popular and
serve a larger number of passengers I
think there's a challenge of getting the
price to work and finding the city pairs
that make it work
another possibility is Elon has talked
about connecting multiple cities to one
spaceport with Hyperloop so if you put
the spaceport on the California
coastline halfway between San Francisco
and Los Angeles and you run a Hyperloop
from San Diego Los Angeles San Francisco
and maybe even Seattle to get to the
spaceport
and now you have all West Coast travel
maybe even Vancouver now you have all
West Coast travel going to one spaceport
in Asia that has hyper loops to Tokyo
Shanghai Beijing Seoul there's a lot
higher volume and you're just having
those trips going back and forth and
then Hyperloop for those who don't know
is a is a concept that Elon has been
pushing of basically doing a tunnel from
the spaceport and you're more multiple
tunnels from the spaceport to the
different cities and taking people at a
fairly high speeds of four or five or
six hundred miles an hour in a vacuum
tunnel that would allow people to land
at a spaceport that's a few hundred
miles away from their destination city
and still get there in a half-hour after
they get off the starship there are
still some big challenges for starships
point-to-point plan one of the biggest
problems is that many cities are inland
they're not on the coast today the vast
majority of rocket travel takes place
with rockets leaving from a coastal spot
and traveling out over the water the
concern is that if a rocket is going to
crash you want it to crash on water and
not on land where people live so many
popular flights like New York City to
Los Angeles or London to Dubai those
involve a lot of Overland travel and
there's a question about whether
national governments will allow rockets
to fly over land like that SpaceX itself
has admitted that they will need to
demonstrate extremely high reliability
to get government support to allow this
to happen they've said they need
starship to fly over a million flights
in order to demonstrate that reliability
and it's going to take a very long time
for starship to deliver a million
flights this problem eliminates a lot of
potential market for starship
point-to-point because so much of our
travel today
kurz Overland New York City to Los
Angeles New York to Chicago another big
problem in so many cities are in Lam
think about Chicago Denver Dallas and
Atlanta in the United States think about
Berlin and Germany and Madrid in Spain
Chongqing and Chengdu and China are
inland cities that are very large the
city of New Delhi in India is another
large city that is inland these cities
are not ideal for this point-to-point
travel because they're in a position
where you'd have to have a rocket
landing on land and the danger of a
crash would be if there's a problem with
a rocket and it lands badly it could
land in a populated area and cause a
tremendous amount of damage and kill
people the other big problem for this
starship point-to-point idea is whether
if you follow rocket launches and I'm a
big fan of SpaceX I watch a lot of their
rocket launches they're often delayed by
a day two days three days even a week
that's not going to work with commercial
travel we are used to airliners taking
off an hour late or two hours late
sometimes but having our airliner not
take off that day and having to wait two
or three days is not going to be viable
so there's really a question about
whether SpaceX has a plan for how to
make these launches more consistent and
launched in bad weather and it's not
just the launch we've even seen SpaceX
launches delayed because they land
rockets and if the landing area has bad
weather that's been a problem so if
we're gonna have a starship launch and
it's going to be flying from London to
Sydney Australia or let's say Los
Angeles to Sydney Australia you not only
need good clear weather at the Los
Angeles launch site you also need good
clear weather at the Sydney Australia
landing site hopefully SpaceX has a plan
for how they're going to do this
reliably it may be that starship because
of its size or some other
characteristics is more capable of
handling difficult weather when it does
launches and landings but that's
something that remains to be
demonstrated for now we don't know if
that's gonna work
starship offers tremendous potential for
making our world smaller than it already
is it could open up travel around the
world in less than an hour but there are
a lot of details to work out before it
becomes a reality it seems like trips
from the east coast of the United States
to the west coast of Europe should be
very viable there's a lot of traffic
between the United States and Europe at
particularly from the east coast of the
United States to the west coast of
Europe London other cities this idea of
having a common spaceport for one edge
of a continent with Hyperloop connecting
them to the cities that seems like it
might work same thing for the west coast
of the United States to go to the east
coast of East Asia that could make a lot
of sense and there could be sufficient
volume to support this the longer-term
dream of being able to fly as Gwynne
Shotwell talked about being able to fly
from Los Angeles to Riyadh Saudi Arabia
Riyadh is an inland city in Saudi Arabia
pretty much surrounded by land no clear
no obvious location for a spaceport that
longer-term dream is really a
longer-term dream
hopefully SpaceX has figured some of
this out already or will figure this out
and it will happen and this could lead
again I always like to end on an
optimistic note I think this is great
stuff I think we're gonna see tremendous
potential for our world to become a
smaller and better place this still
doesn't seem like this going to work in
the short run for inland cities and I
think we're going to need other
solutions for that like Hyperloop this
is something I hope to talk about in a
future video but the positive examples
if you look and say Los Angeles to
Shanghai or Los Angeles to Sydney or
Tokyo to Sydney these are long flights
that are largely over water they cover a
lot of ground very fast saving travel
there's a lot of time thanks for
watching
