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Elon Musk's rocket company, SpaceX, is working on something big – really big.
The Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR, is an unprecedented launch system designed to propel up to 100 people and 150 tons of food, water and other supplies to the surface of Mars. The ultimate goal: colonize the red planet and save the human race.
Musk revealed what he described as the final design of the WCR in September. It consists of two giant stages: a fully reusable rocket booster at the bottom and a fully reusable spaceship at the top. The first crewed mission is scheduled for 2023 and is expected to blow up a Japanese billionaire and a group of artists around the moon.
The illustration below shows the approximate length and shape of each part of the BFR system.
The assumed size and capacity of the WCR is impressive – to the point that many people in the aerospace industry are intrigued by the way it will be done. They also wonder if a private company can successfully build a budget of about 2 to 10 billion dollars. This is Musk's latest estimate for how much the development of BFR will cost; this sum is in fact a derisory sum compared to what NASA pays for its new space launch system (and not reusable).
To help understand the magnitude of what Musk and its thousands of SpaceX employees are trying to accomplish, Business Insider has created an interactive size comparison chart.
Beside the rendering of BFR shown below, you will see a series of familiar objects at the base of the rocket. (Some are so small that you may need to scroll a little)
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