By Hoai Anh  November 1, 2025 | 05:00 pm PT
Tourists wait for Yokozuna Tonkatsu Dosukoi Tanaka, a sumo wrestling themed restaurant to open, in Tokyo, Japan, June 30, 2023. Photo by Reuters
A Japanese travel agency said that it plans to launch a point-to-point transport service in the 2030s that would connect Tokyo with U.S. cities such as New York, using space technology to cut travel time to just 60 minutes.
Nippon Travel Agency said it aims to roll out the service in partnership with a Japanese reusable-rocket start-up, Kyodo News Agency reported.
A round-trip fare would cost about 100 million yen (US$657,000).
The transport vehicle would be launched from an offshore site and could connect any two points on Earth within 60 minutes, Mainichi newspaper reported.
“We hope this business will be a new starting point to connect space travel and tourism,” Nippon Travel president Keigo Yoshida said at a news conference in Tokyo.
The project is expected to proceed in stages: space-food tasting and tours of ground facilities related to space will start in fiscal 2026, and a service offering stays in orbit is planned for the 2040s.
Currently, it takes nearly 13 hours to fly non-stop from Tokyo to New York.
The project is part of an effort to commercialize space travel, turning intercontinental travel into a fast, premium experience.
However, the plan is still in its early planning stages and faces many challenges in reusable rocket technology, aerospace safety regulations, and development costs.
The idea of using rockets to transport passengers intercontinentally, or “point-to-point”, has been pursued by private space companies for many years.
SpaceX of billionaire Elon Musk announced its vision of using the super rocket Starship for “Earth-to-Earth” journeys since 2017.
SpaceX’s ambition is to connect any two major cities in the world within 60 minutes, for example, flying from New York (U.S.) to Shanghai (China) in just 39 minutes.
AloJapan.com