No swearing! Elon Musk renames BFR rocket Starship
Space X boss Elon Musk tweeted today that the BFR rocket that is costing the company roughly $5bn (£3.9bn) to develop has been renamed.
Officially called the Big Falcon Rocket, it is also widely known as the Big F*****g Rocket.
Musk has said the BFR name was inspired by a weapon in computer game Doom called the BFG, or Big F******g Gun.
However, that name is now a thing of the past with Musk tweeting today that the BFR has now been dubbed Starship.
Renaming BFR to Starship
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2018
The rocket, which is still under development, is due to replace the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy vehicles.
Musk tweeted that the rocket technically consisted of two parts: “Starship is the spaceship/upper stage & Super Heavy is the rocket booster needed to escape Earth’s deep gravity well,” he wrote.
He also said that later versions could be capable of interstellar travel in response to a Twitter user who said the Starship name was inaccurate unless the ship could travel to different stars.
Later versions will
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2018
At the weekend Musk tweeted that the new craft was being redesigned, saying the new model was "very exciting. Delightfully counter-intuitive".
In September SpaceX said Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has signed up to be the ship’s first passenger on a planned trip round the moon.