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Old November 9th 18, 11:34 AM posted to sci.space.policy
Torbjorn Lindgren
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Default SpaceX to fly mini-BFS prototype as Falcon 9 upper stage

Fred J. McCall wrote:
Torbjorn Lindgren wrote on Thu, 8 Nov 2018 15:14:32
-0000 (UTC):
Jeff Findley wrote:
The flight tests will not include vertical landing because Musk says
they already know how to do that (duh). I am speculating it may,
however, test the transition from the "belly flop" attitude to vertical
as that would seem to be a critical part of the BFS flight profile to
prove out.


Musk was asked this by Everyday Astronaut and specifically says "No,
we’re building a BFR dev ship to do supersonic through landing tests
in Boca Chica, Texas".


'Through landing' makes it sound like there WILL be powered landings,
so there seems to be some conflict there.


No, you're mixing two different vehicle, Musk says the mini-BFR won't
do that type of testing, it will bne done by the already known "BFR
dev ship" (currently being built)!

It was a follow up to an earlier answer when he explicitly says "Won’t
land propulsively for those reasons" (ER mentioned MVac flow
separation and excessive TWR). So there's no conflict, there's two
unambigous statement both saying it won't do powered landings.