Elon Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX had completed the installation of a launch vehicle for a test suborbital flight of the Starship reusable space-rocket system. Formerly known as the “BFR” (Big Falcon Rocket), the Starship is the space company’s upcoming super heavy-lift launch vehicle meant for journeys to the moon and Mars and for hour-long trips anywhere on Earth.
“Starship test flight rocket just finished assembly at the SpaceX Texas launch site. This is an actual picture, not a rendering”, wrote Elon Musk in Twitter. “This is for suborbital VTOL tests. Orbital version is taller, has thicker skins (won’t wrinkle) & a smoothly curving nose section.”, adds another tweet.
Starship Hopper will do vertical flight tests similar to the Falcon 9 Hopper.
The project codenamed BFR (Big Falcon Rocket) was presented in September 2017 at the International Astronautics Congress in Adelaide, Australia. In November 2018, Elon Musk announced that now BFR will be called Starship. The rocket and space system will consist of two parts: the Starship – the spacecraft or the upper stage, and the Super Heavy – the rocket accelerator (the more powerful analog of the first stage, the Falcon 9). It will be able to put up to 100 tons of payload into orbit. It is assumed that the system can be used repeatedly.
