In article ,
says...

Jeff Findley wrote on Tue, 13 Mar 2018
18:40:53 -0400:


The prototypes had better be close to BFR/BFS in many ways, or it
wouldn't be very useful would it?


It will probably fly without the vacuum engines or a heat shield, as
those aren't necessary for 'grasshopper' tests. However, Musk is
talking quickly moving to orbital testing, where both those things ARE
necessary.

Agreed, so it's quite hard to speculate on the details here. How many
BFS ships will initially be built and to what specs is not being
disclosed, possibly because they're not really sure themselves.

Like Enterprise, it's always possible they'll build one that they intend
to keep using but learn during test flights that it's deficient in some
way and scrap it (stick it on display somewhere) instead of rebuilding
it to the updated specs.

Jeff
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