Your Orbital Rocket Long Haul Flight Replacement RoI Grid

Well, looks like we’re not going to get the personal jetpacks promised us way back in the 60s when James Bond had one already.

But we are apparently due to magically transport ourselves to the other side of the world in minutes within a decade.

Simply pop the few miles upwards, reach a low orbital height, let the earth rotate beneath us, and drop down anywhere inside the normal ninety minute axis spin.

I even touched upon this twelve months ago (Feb 2018) assessing the presentation merits of Elon Musk.

Swiss bank UBS seem to revel in clickbait pr from their airline industry survey. Back in 2017 they proudly stated we’d all be in pilotless aircraft by 2025. Tell that to Boeing’s latest safety system users.

This year, they claim longhaul (10hr+) flights will be “cannibalised” by rocket travel before 2030. Creating a $20 billion sub-sector no less; “Although some might view the potential to use space to service the long-haul travel market as science fiction, we think … there is a large market”.

What I like about the presentation of this “revenue opportunity” – as shown up top here by CNBC – is their choice of a grid over graph.

Add to this, the use of colour shading. Banding values according to their likelihood. With the green cell-fill getting so dark for the real wild ones that you can barely read their black text digits.

If you’re not using this technique to augment display of your positive business case numbers, then perhaps you’re missing a trick to ‘travel super-fast’.