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Elon Musk: SpaceX's Mars Rocket Could Fly Short Flights By Next Year
On stage at SXSW, Elon Musk issued yet another incredibly ambitious timeline. During a Q&A session on Sunday, Musk said SpaceX will be ready to fly its Mars rocket in 2019. He said: We are building the first ship, or interplanetary ship, right now, and we'll probably be able to do short flights, short up and down flights, during the first half of next year. Further reading: Fortune.
This is the BFS ship which will ride on the BFR rocket for Earth to Mars launches, but also able to do SSTO in Mars gravity for the return trip.
They are going to be doing short (2-3 miles up) test SSTO-style launches (and landings) either at Boca Chica or from ship-to-ship by the end of next year. Most of the people who have been working on FH have been reassigned to work on BFR/BFS exclusively.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Musk did not build the first electric car. He was not the first person to launch satellites to LEO either.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
He already owns the most powerful rocket on the planet, so he's won a marathon. This is about plans for the next one.
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The story is irritatingly vague on this point, but a previous comment by Musk makes it clearer:
Will be starting with a full-scale Ship doing short hops of a few hundred kilometers altitude and lateral distance [...] Those are fairly easy on the vehicle, as no heat shield is needed, we can have a large amount of reserve propellant and don't need the high area ratio, deep space Raptor engines.
He's talking about only the upper stage of the BFR - the spaceship part that actually goes to Mars and back - taking off under its own power and doing a little hop through the atmosphere. That's much less ambitious than even the first step you listed, testing in orbit. But it's something fundamental that should be done first, and it's basic enough that it might just be possible on this sort of timeline (within 21 months). Even if the spaceship could lift a few metres off the pad, hover for a few seconds under control, then land softly, that would be a solid result.
Musk did not build the first electric car. He was not the first person to launch satellites to LEO either.
Tip: 110010001000 is the local jester/troll. He's just posing as one of the over-the-top Musk groupies that worship him more than teen girls love Justin Bieber.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'm a fan of Musk, but if you go to their web page, they conveniently omit the Saturn V in their rocket comparison.
The following is from http://www.spacex.com/falcon-h...
"Only the Saturn V moon rocket, last flown in 1973, delivered more payload to orbit"