Total Members Voted: 142
Voting closed: 04/10/2018 11:47 pm
So unveiling at IAC with video would not count since press not present in official capacity with hardware.
IAC 2018 - Bremen Germany - Oct 1 - 5, 2018...Elon will likely show video of whatever BFS hardware they have got built at that point... It may not be flight ready yet... But an BFS airframe mostly built (with people for scale) would be great... Later (near X-mas?)... have a live unveil of the completed Test BFS, before shipping it around to BC (or wherever) for flight testing...So early October... my pick...My 2 cents on poll...
If Elon plans on going to IAC 2018 and showing some progress off there, I would think he'd want at least the basic structure near-complete, so we can see the basic shape and size of the thing.
Will be starting with a full-scale Ship doing short hops of a few hundred kilometers altitude and lateral distance. Those are fairly easy on the vehicle, as no heat shield is needed, we can have a large amount of reserve propellant and don't need the high area ratio, deep space Raptor engines.Next step will be doing orbital velocity Ship flights, which will need all of the above. Worth noting that BFS is capable of reaching orbit by itself with low payload, but having the BF Booster increases payload by more than an order of magnitude. Earth is the wrong planet for single stage to orbit. No problemo on Mars.
But I think they might unveil a grasshopper or F9 Dev R like test article by June 2019.
I'm really hoping we'll see some timelapse of fibre being laid.
https://twitter.com/13ericralph31/status/975870365338558464"est. completion 16-18 months (NET H2 2019)" for the facility in which BFS will be built. Seems like Elon's claim that BFS will be flying early next year is already slipping into late next year... or 2020.