TRANSCRIPT
I know what the billionaires in space are really doing.
Welcome to Throw Forward Thursday. My name is Graeme Codrington, and every week we take a jump into the future and see what’s going on. This week, we’re talking about space travel. Next week we’ll talk about space tourism, which is what most people think that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Richard Branson and others are doing in space.
But I know better. What we’re really talking about is the end of long-haul travel. You see what I really think they’re aiming at and what I think is going to be possible sometime in the future is that you can get from London to Singapore in 34 minutes. You can get from Tokyo to New York in 48 minutes. You see, the Rockets that these space billionaires are using are reusable. You can put a lot of people into them. You can turn them around very, very quickly. And I think that they are going to be able to offer not just trips into space for a few minutes or for a few days at a time, but they’re going to be able to offer for you to go out to a launch pad, hop into one of these rockets, get blasted up into the heavens 24,000 kilometres an hour. That’s the speed that those rockets go shooting across to the other side of the world.
You can get to anywhere on the planet in less than an hour and again on the other side, hop out and you’re at your destination. This, I think, is the future of business travel, tourism, travel and maybe even cargo and deliveries. No more long-haul destinations anywhere on the planet in less than an hour. Yes, of course. The first few times it’s going to be only for the rich and famous. It’s going to be like a fully first-class flight with no economy at the back. But eventually it will come within reach of those people who really, really, really need to get rid of long-haul travel or can afford to take the pain out of getting to the other side of the world. It’s going to be huge opportunities for different industries. I’m sure the insurance industry is going to have a look at the risk of doing that. If it goes wrong, it tends to go spectacularly wrong.
Maybe we’ll be reducing the risk over time in the future as well. So, there we have it. I know what the space Cowboys are doing, and if they get it right, there won’t be billionaires. There’ll be trillionaires. This is something that we all want and hopefully it comes sooner rather than later.
Throw forward Thursdays. Join us every week as we look at a glimpse of the future and see how it might impact us today. Don’t forget that if you’d like to contribute, you can go to ask about the future. com or one word, askaboutthefuture.com and give us any feedback, ask us any questions or give us some suggestions for topics that you’d like us to cover.
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Graeme Codrington, is an internationally recognized futurist, specializing in the future of work. He helps organizations understand the forces that will shape our lives in the next ten years, and how we can respond in order to confidently stay ahead of change. Chat to us about booking Graeme to help you Re-Imagine and upgrade your thinking to identify the emerging opportunities in your industry.
For the past two decades, Graeme has worked with some of the world’s most recognized brands, travelling to over 80 countries in total, and speaking to around 100,000 people every year. He is the author of 5 best-selling books, and on faculty at 5 top global business schools.