BFR early next year.

JF Mezei wrote on Wed, 14 Mar 2018
03:42:22 -0400:

On 2018-03-13 18:40, Jeff Findley wrote:

They built a full scale composite tank and pressure tested it to
destruction a couple years ago.
http://www.businessinsider.com/space...nk-ocean-ship-
test-2016-11

But correct to state that the destructive test was only a few months
ago? I seem to recal some tank video that was much more recent than 2016.


True. Regular pressure tests were done at the end of 2016. The
destructive test was about a year later.

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


Depends on the goal of that test flight. It could very well be that a
real BFS ship is ready to be built with the structural aspects all done,
but will go without payload (the crew compartment)


Uh, the 'crew compartment' isn't payload. It's structure.


On the other hand, there maty be PR/marketing pressres to have a flight
early, at which point engineers are told to focus on engines/tanks and
just build a epty shell around iot that looks like BFS. (the real
structsures/shell can be designed/built later).


I don't think Musk will want to spend millions and millions of dollars
on a worthless test.


Or, we could see naked engines/tanks go up and down. It really depends
on how far they are in the design.


You don't set a test and then say, "And we'll conduct it with whatever
we can get together by then."

You really don't know **** about how engineering development works, do
you?


--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson