The CEO of the company SpaceX has stated that he is “so dying to do a supersonic, electric VTOL jet” in his recent tweet.
However, there is one issue that might create problems: “adding more work will make my brain explode,” Musk added, including emojis of a brain and a firecracker to further elaborate on his point.
This is justified as he is the CEO of space, electric car, and brain interface companies. All these responsibilities are enough to keep him occupied every day of the whole year.
In his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in 2018, Musk famously smoked a blunt and that is when he explored what such a jet could appear as.
“I have a design for a plane,” Musk told Rogan at the time. “I’ve thought about this quite a lot, quite a lot.”
“The trick is that you have to transition to level flight,” he added. “The thing you’d use for vertical takeoff and landing is not suitable for high-speed flight.”
Once at high altitude, “the energy you use in cruise is very low, and then you can recapture a large part of your gravitational potential energy on the way down,” Musk explained at the time. “So you really don’t need any kind of reserve fuel.”
“The electric airplane isn’t necessary right now,” Musk told Rogan back in 2018.
“Electric cars are important, solar energy is important, stationary storage of energy is important,” he argued. “These things are much more important than creating electric supersonic VTOL.”
According to his recent tweet, it is evident that he is still ready to pursue the idea that he had for the past three years.
He has brought about the kicking off of space tourism, and mass manufacturing electric cars along with becoming the richest person in the world (twice), so he might not have time for making a supersonic jet just yet.