Elon Musk and SpaceX shared images of Big Falcon Rocket with changes

A
September 2018 rendering of SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket launching
through the cloud tops and toward space.

Elon
Musk/SpaceX via Twitter

• Elon Musk and SpaceX have published new
  renderings of the
  Big Falcon Rocket launch system, which is designed to ferry
  people to the moon and Mars.
• The release of the images coincides with a major announcement
  from SpaceX: Tonight, the company will
  name the first passenger to fly on the rocket. 
• The images reveal an important design change — instead of one
  wing, the spaceship now appears to have three wing-like
  structures.
• The identity of SpaceX’s first private passenger, who
  has signed on to fly around the moon, will be revealed at 6
  p.m. PT (9 p.m. ET). 

Elon Musk and his rocket company, SpaceX, have published new and
imaginative illustrations of a spacecraft that’s supposed to
ferry people and supplies to the moon and Mars.

The above rendering of the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR, as
the launch system is called, shows it punching through the cloud
tops of Earth and flying toward space. Musk shared the image to
Twitter on Monday morning.

A
Sept. 2018 rendering of SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket launching
toward space.

Elon
Musk/SpaceX via Twitter

Musk also tweeted a side view of the vehicle (right) that more
clearly shows its two stages: a booster, or lower stage, and an
upper-stage spaceship.

Last week, SpaceX shared an illustration of the ship in space,
flying around the moon while firing seven rocket engines.

That picture, below, shows the Big Falcon Spaceship — as it’s
sometimes called by Musk and his company — without the booster.

All three images were released just before a major announcement
from SpaceX. Tonight, the company is planning to name the first
person who will ride a BFR spaceship around the moon.

SpaceX’s
rendering of a Big Falcon Rocket spaceship carrying a passenger
around the moon.

SpaceX/Twitter

“SpaceX has signed the world’s first private passenger to fly
around the Moon aboard our BFR launch vehicle — an important step
toward enabling access for everyday people who dream of traveling
to space,” SpaceX said on its website.

The company plans to broadcast live video of its announcement
about the mysterious passenger starting around at 6 p.m. EDT (9
p.m. PDT) on Monday.

Read more:
Elon Musk is about to name the first tourist to fly around the
moon — here’s how to watch SpaceX’s announcement live
tonight

But these new images may be more important than the revelation of
the passenger’s identity. That’s because they show off subtle but
important differences in a vehicle that is ultimately supposed to
ferry up to 100 people and 150 tons of supplies to Mars — and, of
course, a person around the moon.

SpaceX’s interplanetary ship tripled its number of wings 

Musk, who is SpaceX’s chief designer, publicly described the BFR
and showed renderings of the system at the 2017 International
Aeronautical Congress (IAC).

According to those
plans, the BFR would be 347 feet tall and 30 feet wide. It
would be capable of carrying 100 people and 150 tons of supplies.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk
speaks at the International Astronautical Congress on September
29, 2017 in Adelaide, Australia.

Mike Brake/Getty
Images

The newly released renderings show each stage of the system
having roughly the same proportions. However, the spaceship’s
body appears to have gotten a significant design revision.

The 2017 version of the ship had one delta wing, as Musk called
it, near its heat shield. The wing is designed to help the ship
plow through planetary atmospheres like those of Earth and Mars.

“Depending on whether you’re landing on a planet or a moon that
has no atmosphere, a thin atmosphere, or a dense atmosphere, and
depending on whether you’re reentering with no payload in the
front, a small payload, or a heavy payload, you have to balance
the rocket out as it’s coming in,” Musk said during his 2017 IAC
presentation.

He added that his engineers originally tried to avoid having even
one delta wing, but said “it was necessary in order to generalize
the capability of the spaceship such that it could land anywhere
in the solar system.”

It appears one wing wasn’t enough, though: There are now three
wing-like structures on the spaceship.

Elon Musk/SpaceX via Twitter; Business
Insider

SpaceX may have decided that these wings are necessary for the
system to safely return to Earth. Or perhaps they’re for slowing
the ship down as it enters Mars’ atmosphere, which has air about
1% as dense as our planet’s.

The renderings also show another wing on top of the ship, which
resembles a tail fin like those on NASA’s space shuttle orbiters.
Musk called it “forward moving wing” on Twitter; presumably it’s
there to help further stabilize the ship as it moves through air.

What’s going on with the BFR design changes?

We contacted several aerospace experts to get their takes on
these design changes.

Greg Autry, the director of
the Southern California Spaceflight Initiative, told Business
Insider in an email, “I think it is really healthy to see this
iterative change happening, because I believe we can assume it is
based on actual development and simulation going on.”

Indeed, the spaceship and other BFR hardware are being
prototyped inside a 20,000-square-foot tent at the Port
of Los Angeles — at least until a
much bigger permanent facility is completed.

“Elon is an incrementalist and to a great extent he is always
thinking aloud. I admire this, but people who do this openly get
criticized when their ideas evolve,” Autry said.

SpaceX’s approach to designing rockets and spaceships is notably
different than the way NASA and others do it, he added.

“NASA would design something like the Space Shuttle on paper and
then build that damn thing come hell or high-water. Insights
developed during the early production were usually ignored,’”
Autry said. “Elon is from the software world, where rapid
prototyping and iterative development are the norm … Expect a
different model from him, with some visible hiccups and in the
end a safer and more efficient design.”