SpaceX has signed a private passenger for the first BFR launch around the Moon

SpaceX has officially announced that it has signed a private customer for what may be the first BFR launch to the Moon, ETA and the individual question currently undetermined.

Included with the announcement was a topical rendering that appears to show an updated BFR spaceship performing a burn of seven Raptor engines (apparently all of sea level variants) around the Moon, confirmed by CEO Elon Musk in a Twitter reply to be indicative of a new version of the next-generation SpaceX rocket.

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

Nearly overshadowing SpaceX’s intriguing lunar tourism contract, the photo included with official announcement features a BFR spaceship (BFS for short) that has rather dramatically departed from SpaceX renders of BFR and BFS dating back to late 2017 and early 2018. Most notably, the spaceship’s delta wing has been removed in its entirety, replaced by a triangular layout of three fins and what appear to be forward canards (control surfaces most commonly used to improve aerodynamic stability). Those apparent canards could also potentially act as a sort of stand in to the grid fins present on both BFR and Falcon boosters.

This new render also implies a logical relocation of the ship’s landing legs from external pods to the tips of its new wings, and may even betray some sort of hinge mechanism on the bottom two wins, perhaps meant to allow BFS to safely land on its trio of wingtips while still preserving the inherent aerodynamic stability of BFR 2017’s delta-wing.

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