With SpaceX successfully demonstrating the catch of Starship's Booster and Musk's Trump's election as President, Musk's next major industry disruption is but a few years away. The airline industry and aerospace giants like Boeing and Airbus are about to experience what the car and space industries are now experiencing, courtesy of Elon.
1. How it works
As the above video demonstrates, passengers on SpaceX ETS (Earth Transport Services) will board a very fast large catamaran or trimaran for a 40-50km ride to SpaceX's floating Starship launch facilities, which will be located in the open sea or ocean, far from land because of the extreme noise of Starship launches and range safety issues.
Customs, immigration and 2nd stage security procedures will likely be handled on board the boat to maximise efficiency and customer experience. As the boats will depart from local docks, ferry terminals and marinas, Musk will be able to craft the entire experience to his customer's needs and eliminate many of the painful and unpleasant aspects of airports.
In particular, security can be far better handled with an initial basic level on-shore followed by more seamless but effective security aboard. Boats are much harder to blow up than planes and a big multihull has space for different, pleasantly set up security zones to be passed through at leisure rather than endless queuing.
Passengers will then go straight from the boat, up the launch tower elevator to their seats on the Starship and fly to their destination 1/3rd or 1/2 way around the globe in under 1 hour. They will get to experience weightlessness and see the Earth from space - both extraordinary experiences in themselves.
2. Minimising Regulation
It is highly likely that most SpaceX ETS launch facilities will be located more than 12 nautical miles from land in international waters outside the territorial jurisdiction of nation states. This is partly due to the physical issues outlined above but also so that SpaceX ETS can adopt a single flag jurisdiction for all his launch facilities and thus only have to comply with one set of regulations. This will likely be the US initially, but one day could be a smaller jurisdiction that Musk controls more completely. When you own a ship or floating platform you get to choose its flag state.
3. Customer Experience
It is obvious that SpaceX ETS will provide a massively superior customer experience in every way to today's long distance air travel. As a once regular flyer between Australia and Israel I can tell you that long distance air travel sucks big time. 24 hours in the air and airports is a killer.
I hate airport queues which treat people like animals or criminals.
Woke airport security that makes life miserable for everybody because they focus on things (like a bottle of water or work tools) rather than people. In Israel, with the best security in the world, you can take a water bottle on the plane as the focus is on the person. Everyone is interviewed by attractive security staff. They are trained to determine whether the person is a potential threat. If so further questioning and investigations of luggage etc are done.
Anything can be a weapon, but people planning something nasty are unable to hide physiological ticks.
Musk will likely be able to adopt this more sensible approach, as it will be within his control.
4. How much will it cost?
Contrary to most people's expectations, it will ultimately be a similar price to existing long distance airline flights.
Musk has spoken about this in the past and I examine the cost issues in detail below.
4.a. Capital Cost
Both long distance airliners and Starships are complex and expensive pieces of engineering that cost a lot of money.
The ultra long distance Boeing 777-9 aircraft costs $442.2 million.
The current cost of building a fully stacked Starship and Booster has been recently estimated to be only $90 million.
This is still in the prototyping stage so costs will likely drop considerably.
Elon Musk told Dr Robert Zubrin that "he anticipates to be turning out Starships for a costs of about $10 million each." [The New World On Mars, 2024, Dr Robert Zubrin, at page 55.]
Now this cost is is just for Starship and does not include Booster, which is larger (71m vs 50m high and has 33 Raptor engines vs 6 for Starship). So Booster probably costs double Starship to build. Let's say $20M.
Now let's be conservative and add in a Musk optimism factor of 100% so that at scale, Starship and Booster cost $60M to build.
Add 100% profit margin and this is only $120M, less than 1/3rd the cost the ultra-long range aircraft it is competing with.
4.b. Capital Utilization
Because a Starship is so much faster, it can complete many transcontinental flights in a single day whereas a traditional airliner takes most of the day just to get to its destination.
That means that SpaceX ETS (Earth Transport Services) may get 3-5x as much capital utilization as a typical airline. 3-5x as many flights means 3-5x the number of tickets assuming similar passenger capacity. Starship is expected to be able to take around 300 people on E2E flights, the same as a Boeing 777-9. While it has a greater internal volume, it is difficult to organise it as efficiently.
4.c. Other Operational Costs
Catering, Staff Costs, Airport Fees and Overflight Fees are major contributors to the cost of running a long distance flight.
Long distance flights require 2 full meals and snacks to be provided to passengers. This is a significant cost to the airlines.
Pilots and crew have mandatory rest requirements that means the number of pilots and crew increases as flight length rises beyond 8 hours and is often double on 12+ hour flights.
This creates substantial wage costs and reduces passenger capacity.
Airport fees are another substantial cost that SpaceX ETS avoids. They are not cheap.
As SpaceX ETS flies into space it is beyond national airspace and thus will not have to pay overflight fees that many countries charge.
4.d. Fuel Costs
While Starship uses more fuel than a long range airliner, it burns liquid methane and oxygen (in a 1:3.52 ratio) "MethOx" which is much cheaper than the highly refined kerosene (avgas) used by commercial aircraft. According to Dr Zubrin, Starship needs 5000 tons of fuel at $150/Ton to fly between any two points on Earth which works out at $750,000 per flight.
Others online suggest that $100/Ton for MethOx or less is achievable with LOX being obtainable by distillation from air at $40 a ton and methane obtainable more cheaply by bulk separation from natural gas.
For example a recent $650 million long term deal for natural gas supply in Israel for 3.5 Billion cubic meters (2.53 million tonnes) values the natural gas, which is 95%+ methane, at $256 a ton. If this can be processed to pure liquid methane for $300 a ton, then a ton of MethOx can likely be produced by SpaceX for (3.52x$40+$300)/4.52 = $97.52 per ton.
I note that there are many places in the world where long term natural gas contracts are available at even cheaper prices than in Israel.
Also there are places where it is more expensive (ie Europe).
SpaceX will likely pursue its own production of MethOx at massive scale and bring its fuel price down lower than $100/ton in many locations.
But based on $100/Ton the fuel cost for Starship and Booster will be $500,000 per flight.
Based on 300 passengers this is $1,667 per person.
A Boeing 777 has a fuel capacity of 145.538 tons and a maximum range of 15,843km. Jet fuel is currently around $700/ton. So the cost to fully fuel a Boeing 777-9 would be around $100,000 at current prices.
But of course oil prices fluctuate a lot and Avgas prices are closely linked. In contrast, long term natural gas contracts are fixed. This gives SpaceX ETS more stable long term economics.
4.e. Conclusion:
So while fuel costs currently favour airliners, all the other cost components strongly favour Starship.
According to Zubrin (page 51), airline ticket prices are typically triple plane fuel costs, which would mean $300,000 / 300 people =$1000 one way.
I think this is low for a flight times over 15 hours as while it is possible to get a flight to Australia for this price it is pretty much as cheap as you can get and long term average prices will be much higher (perhaps 2x).
So average airline ticket prices for Starship competitive routes likely average $2000 one way.
SpaceX ETS could likely price at $2500 - $3000 one way and be strongly profitable.
Given the massively faster flight time and better customer experience, SpaceX will likely destroy the existing long distance airline industry and aerospace industry.
For any flight over 5 hours where there is a Starship route, the vast majority of customers will choose Starship.
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It sounds like something out of sci-fi, doesn't it? Space can't be too far behind, so space travel. The ability to click our heels and be where we wish down here on Earth. I'm wondering, though, once these things we spent years dreaming and fantasizing about are accomplished and readily available, what will become of our fantasies? What will they look like once these once unattainable new realms are conquered?
This was a cool read :)
Thanks. It is certainly Sci-Fi made real!
SpaceX ETS plans are particularly relevant for me personally because of having my older kids, parents and other family in Australia. It would make a huge difference if my Israel family and Australian family were able to be 2 hours apart instead of 24 hours apart.
I think that SpaceX's plans for settling Mars actually open up endless horizons for humanity, both physically and spatially and in terms of freedom to pursue all sorts of fantasies, including alternative social and governance arrangements and of course low and zero gravity sports and other physical activities :-).
Mars is just the start. It is a world with as much land area as Earth with no entrenched interests, native people or established players. A chance for hundreds of colonies to start again and build different versions of a better world - a bit like good crypto projects, but in the real world without regulation. The best will thrive and the good ideas will percolate back to Earth. This is what the USA did for the world in its early, frontier years.
It is also what happened in Israel with the early Kibbutzim and Moshavim exploring all sorts of alternative communal arrangements which are not possible in existing communities or inhabited places (eg fully Vegetarian, fully communal with all property shared & many others).
Settlement there then opens up the Asteroid Belt (which is immense) to mining and later settlement.
A triangular trade will exist with Mars supplying food and low tech stuff to The Belt, Earth supplying High-tech stuff to Mars and The Belt supplying raw materials (esp metals) to Earth.
The technologies arising from this will allow settlement of the whole Solar System and ultimately inter-stellar travel and settlement of planets around other stars.
I recommend reading Dr Zubrin's The New World on Mars as all this is fleshed out in great detail.
I also recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars series for a fictionalised take that is even more relevant today than it was when first published 32 years ago.
Yes, I certainly thought of that while reading this. An important difference, especially as your kids get older and will presumably start having families of their own. Well, hopefully Elon gets to work :)
Oh completely. It's hugely exciting. It's a good comparison with early America, I liked that from your previous post. I always think, watching films about that era, that sure America's kinda fucked now, but imagine being alive then and being able to witness that immense expanse of possibility. Speaking of, this conversation brought The Expanse to mind, with their Belters and Earth-Mars perpetual mistrust (really fun watch/read if you're in this frame of mind). Also of Hamilton (Peter F this time). I haven't had a chance to read Kim Stanley Robinson, but I keep hearing the name. Thank you for both recommendations (Zubrin was already on my list from our previous conversation) :D
I love The Expanse. Watched it 3 times through already!
Excellent on the tech and general reality of settlement of the solar system - a topic rarely dealt with in SciFi, but much closer at hand than the more popular interstellar adventures.
The idea that Belters will be poor and downtrodden makes great fiction, but is contrary to the basic economics.
For a long time, labour will be in very short supply off Earth, like early America, because of costs of getting people there and because an ever expanding frontier keeps pulling people further out.
Mining asteroids is very skilled and dangerous labour and will command premium wages, just like working on oil rigs does on Earth. In Australia, miners and offshore rig workers earn huge money.
Even if the low G did cause the inability to return to Earth G over generations, these people wouldn't be trapped but would be in huge demand, including for further expansion.
Another of my favourites (not just because of the shared surname). I think I've read all his books. I just re-read Misspent Youth before Hive Fest. Was super interesting reading a 25 year old SciFi projection of today. Many things in the book came true or even better - some for me personally :-) -, but others he got completely wrong.
The Expanse really hooks you in, doesn't it? Hamilton, too. I never know what to read from him next. They're great fun (and really strong writing), even if not everything comes true. I think that's part of the fun. I love older books that are set in the 2020s or nearby. Like hearing someone talking about you. I'm realizing now I haven't read Misspent Youth. Too many books, much too little time.
That makes sense. We keep asking where and how people are gonna work when many jobs become obsolete thanks to AI. But we only look to Earth, and that's fair. Fear always makes people short-sighted. I'm glad Belters wouldn't have it so bad, at least at first. I'm glad there might be hope :)
You should definitely read Misspent Youth. Its quite short and I think you'll find it very interesting.
Glad to see those numbers crunched! A price of $2500 vs $1000 would not be an obstacle for those who can afford it for the perks you mention. Reminds me of the Concord jet that I heard shut down recently for some reason. Oh, it was the noise, if I recall. If so, then maybe another competitor would be an Expeditionary Transport Dock, like an aircraft carrier without weaponry, and follow the same route you mention for the passengers. My AI says an Expeditionary Transport Dock goes for around $1.6 billion.
Its actually $2500 for SpaceX ETS vs $2000 for airline for very long routes (15+ hrs). But for shorter routes 5-10 hours the price advantage of airlines increases.