The SpaceX BFR is looking more and more like it’s straight out of 1950’s sci-fi…
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. Find out who’s flying and why on Monday, September 17. pic.twitter.com/64z4rygYhk
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 14, 2018
Up until now, renderings of the BFR had always been sort of a lifting body. Two main iterations had been shown… the first was a cylinder with an ogival nose and three equally separated long fairings covering the landing legs. The fairings served as aerodynamic strakes, and the whole vehicle was essentially radially symmetrical. The second version had more or less the same body but with a distinct belly formed by two small wings at the rear for control and gliding and a flattened surface between the wings on the windward of “bottom” surface, faired into the main cylinder of the body. It also had two even smaller stubs on the leeward or “top” side of the fuselage. In this design, there were four landing legs contained in the wings and stubs.
The latest version goes back to the pure cylinder and back to three landing legs. However, instead of stubby strakes, it has three distinct tailfins, with the landing legs in wingtip fairings. There appear to be canards up front. There is also something odd going on around the engines. There are a dozen “flaps” surrounding the seven engines, purpose unclear. Perhaps these are meant to extend in some way to produce a single larger nozzle for vacuum performance, or perhaps they are meant to provide protection for the engines during long duration spaceflight or during entry. Presumably we’ll find out soon.
