Following the success of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch on Tuesday, Elon Musk says the company will now put all its efforts into building its biggest rocket ever, the BFR (Big F***ing Rocket).
Affectionately (and officially named) the Big F***ing Rocket, SpaceX’s next design will be the largest rocket every built by mankind and is the rocket that Musk hopes will be used to colonise other planets such as Mars.
Speaking at a press conference after the launch Musk said: “It gives me confidence that BFR is really quite workable, it’s given me a lot of confidence that we can make the BFR design work.”
“Most of our engineering resources will be dedicated to BFR and so I think that will make things go quite quickly,” Musk said.
Where as Falcon Heavy is currently the world’s most powerful rocket, it still can’t quite compete with the sheer power that was produced by NASA’s original Saturn V Moon rocket back in the 60s and 70s.
What is SpaceX’s BFR?
SpaceX started with Falcon 9, it then stuck three Falcon 9s together to make Falcon Heavy and finally there’s the BFR.
Bigger than anything we’ve built before, BFR is capable of lifting 150 tonnes of space station, buildings or 100 passengers into space and then on towards a planet.
It’s also fantastically powerful, using a staggering 31 rockets to send it into space.
BFR isn’t just capable of interplanetary travel. Thanks it its ability to land and then take off again Musk sees it as being a possible answer to current long-haul flight across the globe.
Passengers would pay around the same price as most long-haul flights today, get on board the spacecraft and then be jetted anywhere in the world in under an hour.
Musk unveiled the BFR back in September last year but there was little concrete evidence that they would actually start building it.
Well true to his word, Musk has said that SpaceX will now start devoting all its resources into building the rocket.
When will BFR liftoff?
BFR is set for its first test launch as early as 2019 and Musk’s confirmation that SpaceX is already building it seems to confirm this.
If the test launch goes as planned SpaceX will then start planning missing beyond Earth including two missions to Mars in 2022.