Elon Musk’s SpaceX could cut London to New York flight to just 29 minutes with ‘high-speed spacecraft’

SPACEX is building a rocket that will fire tourists from London to New York in under half an hour.

The 18,000mph Starship, due for its first manned flight in 2023, could render long-haul plane travel virtually obsolete.

That's according to one group of experts, who say the future of air travel will involve high-speed rockets that breach the upper atmosphere before returning to Earth.

The market for this "point-to-point" rocket travel will be worth £15billion a year by 2030, investors at Swiss firm UBS claim.

Jarrod Castle and Myles Walton, analysts with UBS, said: "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.

"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.";

The pair were discussing general point-to-point rocket travel, though SpaceX is the only firm with serious plans for it.

Owned by scandal-hit billionaire Elon Musk, the rocket maker reckons its Starship spacecraft will one day carry humans to the Moon and Mars.

While still in the early stages of development, the spacecraft, which seats 100 people, could also be used to take tourists between destinations on Earth.

According to UBS, such technology could cut long-haul flights – such as the 23-hour trek from London to Sydney – to under half an hour.

It will also make space tourism to Mars and other planets a reality, they said, with hotels signing up to build outposts in space stations.

Analysts reckon the space tourism industry, worth around £300billion today, will be worth over £600billion by 2030.

Of this, point-to-point rocket flights would make up a £15billion industry that will "cannibalise" long haul plane flights, UBS said.

As well as SpaceX, rocket companies Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are attempting to take tourists to space.

However, while SpaceX has publicly announced its intentions to take paying customers to the moon and beyond, its bitter rivals have their sights set closer to home... for now.

Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic performed its second manned test flight to space last month, and plans to begin taking tourists on six-minute space trips later this year.

Blue Origin, bankrolled by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, will run similar space tourism flights starting later this year.

It's unclear when SpaceX will begin test flights for Starship, but the firm has promised to fly billionaire Japanese mogul Yusaku Maezawa around the moon in 2023.

Musk has previously said he wanted to begin Mars flights in 2022 and last year was still claiming the first trips could be in 2024.

He is in a race with Nasa, which says it will put humans on Mars within 25 years.

Musk says there is a 70 per cent chance he will go to live on the Red Planet himself, despite a "good chance" of dying on the way.

In December we revealed scientists are a step closer to finding life on Mars thanks to Nasa's new robot explorer.

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