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. Their previous plan for
upper stage recovery was inflatable structures. It'll be interesting
to see what they actually do.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw