Elon Musk reveals near-final design of SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket

SpaceX founder Elon Musk presented an updated and “final iteration” of SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket design on Sept. 17, 2018.Chris Carlson/AP

HAWTHORNE, California — Elon Musk has finally revealed the person who is paying SpaceX untold millions to have the rocket company fly a private mission around the moon.

Yasuka Maezawa, or “MZ” as SpaceX‘s newest benefactor prefers to be called, is a Japanese entrepreneur, art collector, billionaire, and skateboarder who made his fortune in the fashion industry over the past 20 years.

In 2023, Maezawa hopes to pile six to eight artists inside SpaceX’s giant new launch system called BFR, which stands for Big Falcon Rocket (or, as Musk has described it, Big F—ing rocket).

Their launch from Earth and voyage around the moon would take about six days. Maezawa’s goal with the mission, which he’s titled #dearMoon, is to spread messages of art and peace in space and on Earth.

Although Maezawa’s announcement surprised many people inside SpaceX’s rocket factory on Monday night, new images and information about the BFR that Musk shared raised even more eyebrows.

“This is the final iteration, in terms of broad architectural design,” Musk told roughly 100 reporters during the press event.

Here are the latest pictures Musk showed of the BFR, what he said about them, and why tweaks that SpaceX engineers made are so important for the company’s ultimate goal of colonizing Mars.