Elon Musk: SpaceX Earth To Earth Rocket Flight Testing In Three Years, Will Land At Sea

Elon Musk and SpaceX want future rockets to take off from a new facility located several miles offshore. With this target, it has posted job openings for engineers who can help SpaceX create such a rocket launch facility in the middle of the ocean.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently took to twitter to confirm the company¡¯s agenda. As a "superheavy-class spaceport", the facility will be used to launch SpaceX rockets to Mars, moon, as well as for "hypersonic travel around Earth."

The job is based in Brownsville, Texas, near SpaceX¡¯s existing land-based launch center in Boca Chica. To adhere to the nature of the job, the post asks for "previous experience living or working offshore, or professional experience in the marine/offshore industry." It further says that the applicants have to be willing to "work on an offshore platform."

SpaceX is building floating, superheavy-class spaceports for Mars, moon & hypersonic travel around Earth https://t.co/zLJjz43hKw

¡ª Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 16, 2020

SpaceX Earth To Earth Rocket

This is not the first time that SpaceX is hinting at building an offshore facility. On several occasions, the company¡¯s star launch vehicle ¡®Starship¡¯, previously known as the BFR (Big F---ing Rocket), has been showcased to take off from a water-based launch pad and even land back on pad after the separation stage.

An offshore SpaceX landing pad (Image: SpaceX)

Though it has not launched rockets from an offshore facility, SpaceX seems to have quite the experience for the latter part, having landed first stage rocket boosters safely back to Earth close to 50 times now.

Interestingly, apart from flights to the neighbouring celestial bodies, SpaceX would use the offshore launch pad for hypersonic travel around Earth, an idea that Musk shared back in 2017. The plan is to use a slightly smaller version of the Starship to transport people between major cities on Earth in less than half an hour. Once in action, Musk plans such rides to eventually pay for the production of the Starship and its destined journey to Mars.

Musk said that such Earth-to-Earth flights could undergo testing within the next two to three years.

There will be many test flights before commercial passengers are carried. First Earth to Earth test flights might be in 2 or 3 years.

¡ª Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 16, 2020

SpaceX Spaceport

The spaceport off the shore will thus need to be far enough from land to not disturb people during launches and landings. As and when all these plans are brought to practice, the launch pad is expected to run 3 to 4 launches per day and nobody would want to be living near constant sonic booms.

But for those hoping to catch a glimpse of the rockets in action, ¡°get within a few miles of the spaceport in a boat,¡± Musk suggests.