BFR early next year.

On Mar/13/2018 at 6:09 PM, Niklas Holsti wrote :
On 18-03-13 23:01 , Alain Fournier wrote:
Â*Â* ...
I would be very surprised if BFS had anything close to SSTO capability.
It is a spaceship not a launch vehicle.

Musk has said the BFS can do SSTO. Quotes from Musk's answer at
https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musks...bfs-spaceship/,
section headed "DEVELOPMENT SCHEDULE":

--- start quote:

Q: ... Will we see BFS hops or smaller test vehicles similar to
Grasshopper/F9R-Dev? Facilities being built? Propellant plant testing?
etc. etc.

A (Elon): 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.

--- end quote.

Thanks for that. The web page you cited is very interesting.


Alain Fournier