The Daily Beast by Clive Irving 03.17.18
SpaceX’s new spaceship changes the whole game of deep space voyaging by making it much simpler. This could be just the beginning of the New Space Age.Elon Musk, the maestro of SpaceX, has figured out a new way to fly into deep space. In doing so he seems to have disrupted all previous proposals for returning to the moon and reaching beyond to Mars.
Musk is gambling on the success of a project that is a radical departure from anything seen before—and far simpler than any competing space program. It is centered on a 157-foot long spaceship named BFR (Big F**king Rocket). No kidding: That’s longer than the longest version of the Boeing 737 and, with a width of 29 feet it’s eight feet wider than the Airbus A380 super jumbo’s fuselage.
It will be designed to be used in three ways: to carry three kinds of payloads—people, cargo, or fuel (playing the role of a tanker to refuel other vehicles in space).
The project was first revealed last September at a congress in Australia, and he elaborated on its progress at a conference last weekend. Now, as SpaceX is due to begin building the first BFR, new details make clear how much of a game-changer this could be. (Musk promises a more palatable moniker soon. A suggestion: Why not name it Hawking after the sadly departed navigator of the universe?)
More:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musks-big-fking-rocket-is-a-big-fing-deal
