Early phases of in-house BFR structures prototyping is being performed under a temporary tent that is 60 meters long by 30 meters wide and is ~15 meters tall. The dock-side locations minimizes costly transportation through Los Angeles.
In October 2017, Shotwell stated that although BFRs composite tanks would be a challenge.
Recent custom-ordered composite fabrication tooling of the same diameter as BFR indicates that SpaceX has solved the composite tankage and structures.
At the recent TED2018 conference, Shotwell said she has become extremely bullish on BFR and BFS in the last several months.
In her opinion
* BFR (and point-to-point Earth transport) will be deployed “within a decade, for sure.”
* Point to point travel on EArth will be a few thousand dollars per person (less than business fare on a regular plane).
* Earth to Mars trips will be three-month journey with BFR Block 1 but they will try to get to faster transfer paths.
* SpaceX intends to build much larger BFRs, meshing with Elon’s suggestions that 2016’s ITS concept is now perceived internally as a sort of BFR Block 2.
* she believed that spreading human presence throughout the Sol System was only “the first step [towards] moving to other solar systems and potentially other galaxies
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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