SpaceX plans to replace of all their current rockets by the early 2020s with the BFR. Tooling for the main tanks has been ordered and a facility to build the vehicles is under construction; construction of the first BFR is scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2018. SpaceX has the aspirational goal for initial Mars-bound cargo flights of BFR launching as early as 2022, followed by the first crewed BFR flight one synodic period later, in 2024. Serious development of the BFR began in 2017.

Testing of the BFR is expected to begin with short suborbital hops of the full-scale ship, likely to just a few hundred kilometers altitude and lateral distance.