President Trump has been calling Kim Jong Un "Rocket Man" lately, in reference to the North Korean leader's propensity to launch missiles. But while the belligerence heats up between the U.S. and North Korea, SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk spent last week talking up rockets himself. Will we be able to blast off in New York and land in Shanghai in 39 minutes, as Musk suggested? Musk suggests his Falcon flight will hit upwards of 18,000 miles per hour and shrink the planet in almost unfathomable ways. Of course, to make it work it needs to be possible to launch rockets full of people (perhaps as many as 200 at a time) and that requires "space ports" located near the world's major cities.

Source: Forbes September 30, 2017 21:09 UTC