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Musk hints at radical BFR design change Just as I am about to make a video about BFR, there’s another dramatic change to the design, and what change that might be you might wonder, I am sure we’ll find soon enough. BFR has gone through at least 4 if not 5 changes since original Mars Colonial Transport was announced. However that design was seen as too big for what SpaceX wanted and revision soon followed. Enter Interplanetary Transport System. ITS was slightly smaller design, more functional but still very large and very powerful, too powerful it seems as SpaceX scaled that design a bit again and BFR or Big Falcon Rocket was born. However, not year has passed and BFR was revised and re-designed, looking more like Tin Tin rocket than SpaceX, we all thought this was it. But not even 3 months after Tin Tin design, BFR is undergoing another change, and this time a dramatic one? What could it be? What new features Elon Musk plans for us? A week ago, I reported news, which at the time of the print, were relevant, SpaceX announcing Falcon 9 launch of reusable 2nd stage, I called it min-BFR, for it had some features of mini-BFR. I speculated why would SpaceX want to use re-usable 2nd stage. Today, Elon Musk tweeted, SpaceX won’t be working on reusable Falcon 9 2nd stage, pretty much that is it. However, the work on BFR or Big Falcon Spaceship and Big Falcon Rocket will speed up, with Musk commenting “Btw, SpaceX is no longer planning to upgrade Falcon 9 second stage for reusability. Accelerating BFR instead. New design is very exciting! Delightfully counter-intuitive.” Elon Musk is promising massive or drastic changes to recent BFR design, when asked by another Twitter user if he was referring to the company’s latest design, released in September, or other changes, Musk responded, “Radical change,”. Ok we can’t really assume much from this, but elon musk doesn’t mean his words, so it would be interesting to find out what exactly is he referring to. Musk’s comments came 10 days after he announced on twitter the company was planning to modify a Falcon 9 second stage to perform tests related to the BFR. And I promptly made a video about it, speculating why 2nd reusable stage would be smart move. Elon Musk tweeted “Falcon 9 second stage will be upgraded to be like a mini-BFR Ship,”, that design, he said, would allow SpaceX to test technologies like the vehicle’s heat shield and control surfaces during re-entry from orbit that can’t otherwise be tested. From this, I gather, Falcon 9 will be let go once BFR is fully operational, although falcon 9 is likely to continue to fly for Spacex for many years to come, there’ll be no major investments in to Falcon 9 architecture, all the funding is now being directed in to BFR and BFS with likely BFS flight testing starting by mid-2020, and fully BFR system testing in mid-2022. SpaceX would like to send tourists around the Moon, by late 2023, what sort of spaceship Elon Musk is building, hopefully he’ll unveil new design on YouTube and twitter in coming weeks, till then we can only speculate and wonder what SpaceX will suprises us with next.
