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Elon Musk Renames Big Falcon Rocket To 'Starship' (theverge.com)
On Twitter, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that the transportation portion of the company's Big Falcon Spaceship (BFS), will now be called Starship, while the booster portion will be called Super Heavy. The Verge reports: Plans for the 387-foot Big Falcon Rocket were officially revealed back in September. Eventually, the company hopes that it will replace the company's existing Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon rockets. The craft is currently being developed at the Port of Los Angeles, at an expected cost of $5 billion and will be capable of taking up to 100 tons of cargo or 100 passengers as far as Mars.
SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said the company hopes to start doing uncrewed launch tests of the new rocket in late 2019. If all goes well, Musk believes that this could be followed by an initial uncrewed flight to Mars in 2022 with a crewed flight taking place as early as 2024. A mission to fly around the moon with a private passenger on board is planned for 2023. However, given that the Falcon Heavy took nearly twice as long to complete as expected, and that only five percent of SpaceX's resources are currently spent on the Starship, it's best to view these plans as an aspiration.
SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said the company hopes to start doing uncrewed launch tests of the new rocket in late 2019. If all goes well, Musk believes that this could be followed by an initial uncrewed flight to Mars in 2022 with a crewed flight taking place as early as 2024. A mission to fly around the moon with a private passenger on board is planned for 2023. However, given that the Falcon Heavy took nearly twice as long to complete as expected, and that only five percent of SpaceX's resources are currently spent on the Starship, it's best to view these plans as an aspiration.
Musk just called it the "BFR" in a reference to the BFG weapon in the Doom games, many years ago. ... trying to sound dull and respectable.
Only recently did Gwynne Shotwell start calling it the Big "Falcon" Rocket, because
Like DVD, KFC or BP, the term BFR doesn't formally stand for anything.
That's funny. I was going to correct you with the meaning of those acronyms we all know, and when looking for sources I found that you're actually right. Thanks for the info.
Dud he add a warp drive or hyperdrive or some other FTL method?
Its not a starship until it can get to another star system
The engineering community is full of whispers and rumors about how low the bar for safety and rigor is at Musk's companies. Everything they do seems to be hacked together on Elon's whims and never really proven.
Riiight. You're so full of shit your eyes are brown. SpaceX can't hide their failures and their successes are also a matter of public record, and there are vastly more successes than failures.
Corners were cut so hard that SpaceX launched their 18th rocket this year to complete mission success, their 63rd launch attempt overall, reusing a first stage for the second time, and recovered that first stage a second time. They've launched more rockets this year than their competitors launch in three years, for 1/5th as much money, while recovering first stages and reusing them, which their competitors have never done in the history of rocketry.
Oh noes. Muh corners.