Aerospace companies could be blasting passengers from London to New York in less than half an hour by the end of the next decade, it has been claimed.
In a note to investors, Swiss bank UBS wrote that high speed travel via space will soon be a market worth £15 billion ($19.7 billion) a year, and could replace long-haul airline flights.
Passengers will board a rocket in one city and and launch to the edge of space, before flying around the planet at speeds of up to 27,000 kilometres per hour and touching down in another city.
UBS claims that a trip from London to New York in Elon Musk's SpaceX Starship could take just 29 minutes, while travelling to Sydney will take 51 minutes.
SpaceX to start testing Starship rocket that will one day carry humans to MARS
"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," wrote UBS analysts Jarrod Castle and Myles Walton.
Elon Musk has previously said that humans will one day be able to travel anywhere on Earth in under an hour for the cost of a standard airline ticket.
The SpaceX to start testing Starship rocket that will one day carry humans to MARS , which is currently in development, is capable of carrying up to 100 people at a time - and will one day transport humans to the Moon and Mars.
The UBS analysts said that space tourism is another industry ripe for growth. They predict it will be worth £2.3 billion ($3 billion) by 2030, with hotels signing up to build outposts on space stations.
“While space tourism is still at a nascent phase, we think that as technology becomes proven, and the cost falls due to technology and competition, space tourism will become more mainstream."
As well as Elon Musk's Space X, the race to be the first company to send passengers into space is currently being fought by Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.
Virgin Galactic, which is charging £190,000 ($250,000) for a spot on one of its commercial flights, reached space for the first time in December 2018.
Meanwhile, Blue Origin has completed several successful test flights of its New Shepard spacecraft, and plans to start launching tourists into space as soon as this year.
“This area seems to be the market that has the greatest potential to gain traction quickly,” UBS said.
