SpaceX’s BFR officially updated with new fins/legs, canard wings, and more

Speaking before a crowd of roughly 100 members of the press and even more SpaceX employees, CEO Elon Musk and lunar tourism customer Yusaku Maezawa presented and answered questions for more than an hour and a half, over the course of which Musk made public a number of updates to the company’s BFR booster and spaceship.

Maezawa, on the other hand, revealed a wholly unexpected plan for private lunar tourism deemed #dearMoon, built upon the goals of both (partially) funding development of BFR and placing a group of 6-8 international artists aboard a SpaceX spaceship for a journey around the Moon as early as 2023.

This is BFR from @spacex #dearMoon pic.twitter.com/jZiu1RHqUN

— Yusaku Maezawa 前澤友作 (@yousuck2020) September 18, 2018

Lacking no ambition, both BFR and #dearMoon have a vast amount of work to complete before their aspirations can be realized. Foundational to an unprecedented private voyage around the Moon, BFR is where this story begins, and SpaceX’s latest 2018 variation on the concept has departed from the 2017 vehicle’s design, with the majority of those changes centering around the upper-stage spaceship, known as BFS.

Those changes can generally be sorted into three main categories: new wings and fins, new operational strategies for spaceship landings, and new a Raptor engine layout.

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