LOS ANGELES, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- Founder and CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk has changed the name of SpaceX's forthcoming passenger spaceship from Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) to Starship and its rocket booster Super Heavy.
"Renaming BFR to Starship," Musk tweeted Monday night.
"Technically, two parts: Starship is the spaceship/upper stage and Super Heavy is the rocket boost needed to escape Earth's deep gravity well," he said.
Super Heavy is not needed for other planets or moons, Musk added.
He did not reveal why he had renamed the craft.
It is the craft's fourth name -- it started as Mars Colonial Transporter and then became Interplanetary Transport System before changing to BFR.
According to Musk, the new spacecraft, still in development, will be 118 meters long, with a payload capacity of 1,100 cubic meters and 100 metric tons. It will have seven Raptor engines, each capable of 200 tons of thrust.
In September, SpaceX announced that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa would be the first private paying customer to ride around the Moon aboard the company's next-generation rocket.
