What is going on with SpaceX and all these Big Falcon Rocket changes?

Enlarge / Elon Musk speaks near a Falcon 9 rocket during his announcement that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa will be the first private passenger to fly around the Moon aboard the BFR launch vehicle. (credit: DAVID MCNEW/AFP/Getty Images)
SpaceX and Elon Musk have been in the news a lot in recent days, both because of financial disclosures and the rocket company founder's musings on Twitter about his current space obsession—the Big Falcon Rocket or BFR. There has been a lot to process, so here's our best attempt to make sense of what Musk has said and what it may really mean. Musk started breaking news about SpaceX rocket designs about two weeks ago, so we'll start there.
Mini BFR Ship
On Wednesday, November 7, Musk tweeted that the 'Falcon 9 second stage will be upgraded to be like a mini-BFR Ship.' He added that this upgraded second stage could be ready to fly by June 2019. This prompted a flurry of speculation that SpaceX may be taking steps toward making the second stage of its Falcon 9 rocket—the part of the booster that presently inserts a payload into orbit and then burns up upon reentry to Earth's atmosphere—fully reusable.
However, this was not to be the case. Later, Musk clarified that this upgraded 'mini-BFR Ship' will essentially be a small test version of the Big Falcon Spaceship, the spacecraft intended to fly on top of the Big Falcon Rocket booster. Currently, he said, the company cannot test features such as an 'ultra light heat shield' and 'high Mach control surfaces' without doing an orbital reentry. The company still intends to build a Big Falcon Spaceship for supersonic reentry and landing tests at SpaceX's facility in Boca Chica, Texas. It is not clear how many missions the mini-BFR Ship will fly.
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