Starship is a two-stage, fully reusable, super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by American aerospace company SpaceX. Currently built and launched from Starbase in Texas, it is intended as the successor to the company's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, and is part of SpaceX's broader reusable launch system development program. If completed as designed, Starship would be the first fully reusable orbital rocket and have the highest payload capacity of any launch vehicle to date. As of July 24, 2026, Starship has launched 13 times, with 8 successful flights and 5 failures. The vehicle consists of two stages: the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft, both powered by Raptor engines burning liquid methane (the main component of natural gas) and liquid oxygen. Both stages are intended to return to the launch site and land vertically at the launch tower for potential reuse. Once in space, the Starship upper stage is intended to function as a standalone spacecraft capable of carrying crew and cargo. Missions beyond low Earth orbit would require multiple in-orbit refueling flights. At the end of its mission, Starship reenters the atmosphere using heat shield tiles similar to those of the Space Shuttle. SpaceX states that its goal is to reduce launch costs by reusing and mass producing both stages. SpaceX initially expressed ambitions to use Starship for crewed missions to Mars, but the plan was revised to prioritize returning humans to the Moon. SpaceX has also proposed a wide range of missions for Starship, such as deploying large satellites, space station modules, and space telescopes. A crewed variant, the Starship Human Landing System, is being developed under a contract with NASA as part of the Artemis program, with a docking test as part of Artemis III, currently scheduled for 2027, and a crewed lunar landing scheduled for 2028. SpaceX began developing concepts for a super heavy-lift reusable launch vehicle as early as 2005. Starship's current design and name were introduced in 2018. Development has followed an iterative and incremental approach, involving a high number of prototype vehicles and test flights. The first full Starship rocket was launched April 20, 2023, exploding four minutes after liftoff. The program has failed to meet many of its optimistic schedule goals, with several setbacks in development, including the failure of the first four Block 2 upper stages in 2025.
Description When stacked and fully fueled, Starship has a mass of approximately 5,300 t (11,700,000 lb), a diameter of 9 m (30 ft) and a height of 121.3 m (398 ft). The rocket has been designed with the goal of being fully reusable to reduce launch costs; it consists of the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage which are powered by Raptor (RSL) and Raptor Vacuum (RVac) engines. The bodies of both rocket stages are made from stainless steel and are manufactured by stacking and welding stainless steel cylinders. These cylinders have a height of 1.83 m (6 ft), and a thickness of 3.97 mm (0.156 in). A common dome inside the spacecraft separate the methane and oxygen tanks. SpaceX has stated that Starship, in its "baseline reusable design", will have a payload capacity of 100–150 t (220,000–331,000 lb) to low Earth orbit and 27 t (60,000 lb) to geostationary transfer orbit.
Super Heavy booster
Super Heavy was initially 71 m (233 ft) tall (in its Block 1 and Block 2 design, now retired), while Block 3 Super Heavy is 72.3 meters tall. It is 9 m (30 ft) wide, and is composed of four general sections, in ascending order: the engines, the liquid oxygen tank, the liquid methane tank, and the interstage.
Tanks The two cryogenic propellant tanks on Super Heavy are separated by a common bulkhead, a similar structural design to the S-II and S-IVB stages on the Saturn V rocket. After Starship's second flight test, the common dome's design was changed to be more elliptical, altering the propellant capacity of both tanks by a small amount. Each tank possesses roughly 74 stringers for structural reinforcement, attached to their interior walls. The booster's two tanks hold a combined 3,400 t (7,500,000 lb) of propellant: 2,700 t (6,000,000 lb) of liquid oxygen and 700 t (1,500,000 lb) of liquid methane. Fuel is fed to the engines via a single liquid downcomer, and channeled into distribution manifolds of the engines. This system was upgraded on Block 3 boosters, featuring a substantially larger transfer tube connecting the engines and the methane tank. Block 1 booster's have a single booster quick disconnect, along with multiple quick disconnects for the outer engines, while Block 3 boosters have two quick disconnects. One disconnect feeds liquid oxygen into the vehicle, the other feeds liquid methane. The oxygen tank ends at the thrust puck of the vehicle. While the outer twenty engines are mounted on a ring attached to the first steel ring, the inner thirteen are mounted onto the thrust puck, a part of the aft dome. Large steel structures are attached to the bottom of the dome, reinforcing the puck sufficiently to fully support the inner thirteen engines, and at the same time providing pathways for methane and oxygen into the engines. In addition, large filters were added in this region beginning on Booster 10. Liquid oxygen is supplied by a header tank during landing burn for the inner thirteen engines. On Booster 15, the header tank had at least nine additional tanks attached, increasing capacity for the landing burn. The added tanks may have been present on Boosters 12, 13, and 14, though this was unconfirmed as of February 2025. Booster 5 was the only 29-engine booster to receive a header tank, mounted to the side of the oxygen tank instead of being integrated with the thrust puck. The methane funnel is partially contained within the header tank, as the methane sump is directly below it. On Booster 7 and all subsequent vehicles, four aerodynamic chines are located on the outside of the oxygen tank, providing aerodynamic lift during descent, as well as housing batteries, composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) for spin start, and CO2 tanks for fire suppression. On vehicles with hydraulic power units (HPUs), COPVs dedicated to engine ignition, batteries, and communication antennae were located within the HPU cover instead of the chines.
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