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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
Their comments is everywhere. /.?
5 billion to save
Well there's that and the mod down stuff you don't agree with. Are those less than 100 all in all?
He realized cuss-words are awkward as rocket names when he sobered up.
Table-ized A.I.
Doesn't term 'starship' implies interstellar capability?
Oh, wait, I've heard something similar before: autopilot.
... now be known as the Starship Enterprise?
Coming soon: "Starship Troopers"
I hate signatures
The have a breakthrough, something big to tell us. And he already answered that question in a tweet. :)
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Wants to have a look around space x. Some interstellar tech that may need confiscating.
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even better. :)
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when your high. :)
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when your high. :)
When my high what?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Much as I like spaceX, I hate when companies take well established names for cool things and use them for less cool products.
A "starship" is sell understood to be a craft that travels between stars, not something that can launch a payload to another planet.
Similarly "jump drives" "US robotics" , "hover boards", and the ford "fusion" all are in that category.
The new rock is a heavy-lift rocket. Call it what it is or by some generic name "Neptune", Odin or something. Its cool enough as it is without exaggerating .
He actually renamed the transport payload to 'Starship'. The rocket itself was renamed to 'Super Heavy'.
Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon rockets.
The Dragon is a capsule payload, not a rocket.
I'm wondering if there might be some confusion between 'Falcon Heavy' and 'Super Heavy', particularly given the latter was formerly known as 'Big Falcon Rocket'. Therefore, its name contains 'heavy' and once contained 'falcon'. I wouldn't expect the editors of TFA to not make that error.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
100 tons to Mars, wow. Worth noting that's after orbital refueling. If a cargo drop mission is planned for 2022, people had better get on actually making the stuff they'll be dropping; SpaceX isn't making all the stuff required for a Mars habitat, they're depending on others to do that.
I was actually thinking yesterday about them sending a (small) tunnel boring machine to Mars, digging a tunnel underground, putting in some blast doors for an airlock and at the tunnel entrance, and using that as a habitat. It'd provide protection from Martian weather and cosmic rays, and be far more durable than a dome or other above-surface structure.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
I wonder if SpaceX are looking at Waverider designs for BFR re-entry.
With a strongly negative dihedral, you can contain the shock wave under the "wings" and use it as a lifting surface - "compression lift".
To change your lift direction you roll the vehicle around the inside of the shock cone.
Since the purpose of such "wings" is to contain the shock rather than generate lift directly, they don't need much thickness, just (a lot of) heat resistance - maybe even something as flimsy as a woven mesh. ...which means they could be folded and stowed for other phases of flight to reduce drag, you could easily swap out the wings for different planetary atmospheres, and by having your payload/CG on a sliding sled you need fewer control surfaces - like a hang glider.
(Citation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2015...)
TLDR / WAG: Replacing those huge leg-stablizer-thngs on the "Tintin BFR" with something resembling fold-away mosquito netting would add a lot of lightness....could this be Elon's "delightfully counter-intuitive" new BFR design?
The craft is currently being developed at the Port of Los Angeles, at an expected cost of $5 billion
Compared to NASA's version the Space Launch System that is reported as costing $35billion.
Doesn't SpaceX have any feelings for subcontractors? How are they supposed to make a living when a new, non-governmental, outfit starts making competing rockets that are just as good, reusable and 7 times cheaper to develop and up to 10 times cheaper to launch?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
So the spaceship portion is Starship, and the launcher is Super Heavy, so together at launch (from Earth), it's Starship Super Heavy. When using it to ferry passengers across the globe, it will give new meaning to making an SSH connection.
It was all downhill once they renamed themselves "Starship".
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
Seriously, you Americans sound like you're seconds away from dressing in bomb belts and raping children, when you talk like that.
Those are jobs you Europeans leave to the refugees.
When you call something a 'starship' it should actually be, you know, a starship.
You realize that Tesla doesn't make rockets, right? SpaceX is a completely different company with nothing in common with Tesla other than Musk. Robyn Denholm isn't the chair of SpaceX and so her appointment shouldn't have any bearing on SpaceX's naming conventions.
Enigma
Autopilot...
Starship implies a ship that can go between stars. Well at least he is aiming for the stars :D, but can a rocket really be called a ship?
This is like naming things hoverboards and AI, which do not and are not.
-off my lawn.
The existing ones are probably capable of launching small payloads out of the Solar System using some gravity "tricks" (think New Horizons with Jupiter). However, it takes hundreds of K years to reach any stars. "Interstellar" is relative to one's patience.
Table-ized A.I.
*Spaceship
Musk also announced the initial crew and alternate crew selections.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
That's too bad.
when your high... :P
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Apparently I had a lack of sleep that day. Or I was just so itching to make a point about Elon stepping down as Chairman that I rushed to post.