Futurist and inventor Elon Musk unveiled ambitious plans on Friday to send cargo ships to Mars in five years and use rockets to carry people between Earth's major cities in under half an hour. The founder of SpaceX said a planned interplanetary transport system, code-named Big Fucking Rocket (BFR), would be downsized so it could carry out a range of tasks that would then pay for future Mars missions.

Lockheed Martin's human spaceflight strategy chief Rob Chambers (C), system architect Tim Cichan (R) and systems engineer Danielle Ritchey attend a press conference in Adelaide on Friday. Pic/AFP