Remember the futuristic hypersonic jet Tom Cruise piloted in Top Gun Maverick? Dubbed Darkstar, the fictional aircraft reaches its top speed of Mach 10 (7,672 miles per hour or 10 times the speed of sound) in the movie. Believe it or not, Elon Musk is planning to introduce a hypersonic passenger transport system that can reach speeds more than double the top speed of the Darkstar. The world’s richest person recently revealed that his ambitious “Earth to Earth” space travel that uses SpaceX’s Starship rocket as a passenger transporter is “now possible” under the current administration.
The SpaceX Earth to Earth program isn’t new. The idea was first revealed by the company almost a decade ago. The space exploration company even created a video in 2017 to demonstrate how it plans to achieve the goal of hypersonic passenger travel. The same promotional video was recently reshared by an X user, suggesting that SpaceX could potentially have Starship Earth-to-Earth flights approved within a few years, enabling travel between any two cities on Earth in under an hour. Musk responded by confirming that this is now possible.
The Starship Earth to Earth program envisions using its Starship rockets to revolutionize global travel. The goal is to provide ultra-fast, point-to-point transportation on Earth. The massive Starship rockets would carry up to 1000 passengers from one point on Earth to another in a matter of minutes instead of hours. If successful, Starship could significantly reduce intercontinental travel times, making it possible to reach almost any destination on Earth in under an hour.
In this concept, the Starship rocket would launch vertically, reaching suborbital altitudes, where it would travel at speeds exceeding Mach 20 (over 15,000 mph). The ballistic flight will enter space and travel parallel to the Earth’s surface. It will then re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and descend towards the destination. To avoid noise and safety issues in populated areas, SpaceX will use floating sea platforms near major coastal cities for launches and landings. Passengers would travel to and from these platforms by high-speed boats.
SpaceX claims a flight from New York to Tokyo could take around 30 minutes instead of the current 12-14 hours by commercial air travel. A trip from Los Angeles to Shanghai would take a similar amount of time, creating a near-instantaneous travel option for intercontinental distances. The cabin and the flying experience won’t be the same as commercial air travel.
Musk previously said that “no toilets, pilot area or food galley” would be needed because “most flights would only be 15 to 20 mins.” The Earth to Earth program is still a concept, as the company has been focusing on sending humans to the Moon and Mars. However, Trump’s re-election might revive this ambitious project.
The Lockheed Darkstar
While Lockheed’s Darkstar is a fictional hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft developed for the 2022 movie Top Gun: Maverick, the movie prop looked so realistic that it sparked speculation and intrigue. Designed with significant input from Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, it was created to closely resemble a real-world, next-generation hypersonic aircraft, blurring the line between fiction and plausible future technology. The design and concept of Darkstar were heavily influenced by the SR-72, Lockheed’s hypersonic reconnaissance concept that builds on the legacy of the SR-71 Blackbird. Capable of flying at speeds more than Mach 10, the stealth jet is depicted as using advanced engines, including a combined-cycle engine that could transition from turbojet to ramjet and scramjet modes.
