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 September 28, 2026, Starship has launched 14 times, with 9 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 crewed docking test in low Earth orbit on Artemis III, targeted for mid-2027, and the first crewed landing moved to Artemis IV, targeted for 2028.
SpaceX began developing concepts for a super heavy-lift reusable launch vehicle as early as 2005, though these concepts did not result in active development of Starship until 2018. Development has followed an iterative and incremental approach, involving a high number of prototype vehicles and test flights. Due to several setbacks in development, including the loss of the first four Block 2 upper stages in 2025 (three in flight and one, Ship 36, in a ground-test explosion), Starship did not attempt to reach orbit until its fourteenth flight test, which deployed Starship's first operational payload.
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 124.4 m (408 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).
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.
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 3,650 t (8,050,000 lb) of propellant: 2,860 t (6,310,000 lb) of liquid oxygen and 790 t (1,740,000 lb) of liquid methane. Fuel is fed to the engines via a single liquid downcomer, and channeled into distribution manifolds of the engines.
Two quick disconnects are used for loading propellant onto the booster, with one disconnect for liquid oxygen and the other for liquid methane.
The aft dome of the Super Heavy booster is protected by metallic heat shield tiles. Additional thermal protection is present on some parts of the thrust vector control system. This system uses electric actuators on the thirteen engines in the middle and center rings. Unlike the ascent and boostback burns, which use all thirty-three engines, the landing burn uses only these inner thirteen and draws fuel from dedicated header tanks.
The Raptor engine uses a full-flow staged combustion cycle with oxygen and methane-rich turbopumps. Before 2014, only two full-flow staged-combustion rocket engine designs had advanced enough to undergo testing: the Soviet RD-270 project in the 1960s and the Aerojet Rocketdyne Integrated Powerhead Demonstrator in the mid-2000s. To improve performance, the engines burn subcooled propellant; i.e. the propellants are cooled below their respective boiling points to further increase their density and the engine mass flow rates.
The Block 1 version of the booster (used through November 2024) produced a total of 73.5 MN (16,500,000 lbf), just over twice that of the NASA Saturn V first stage, with this total being expected to increase to 80.8 MN (18,200,000 lbf) for Block 3 boosters and later up to 98.1 MN (22,100,000 lbf) with the planned Block 4 vehicle. The thirty-three engines collectively produce large shock diamonds in the exhaust jet, visible during ascent and descent.
During unpowered flight in the upper atmosphere, control authority is provided by cold gas thrusters fed with residual ullage gas. Four perpendicular vents are located within the interstage. Additional vents are located just below the common dome, pointing toward the engines at a slight angle.
The interstage and forward heat shield of the super heavy booster, which enable hot staging, are directly integrated into the methane tank. During hot staging, Super Heavy shuts down all but five inner engines, and remains attached to Starship until the upper stage ignites its own engines. Also embedded into the methane tank are three electrically actuated grid fins, in a 90/90/180 degree arrangement. Two of these fins have hardpoints, which are used for lifting the vehicle onto the launch mount and for catching the booster when it lands at the launch tower.
The now retired Block 2 version of Starship was 52.1 m (171 ft) tall, 9 m (30 ft) wide, and was composed of four general sections: the engine bay, the oxygen tank, the fuel tank, and the payload bay. The retired Block 1 was constructed in a similar manner, though it was only 50.3 m (165 ft) tall. Elon Musk stated in 2021 that the vehicle had a dry mass of roughly 100 t (220,000 lb). The windward side is protected by a heat shield composed of eighteen thousand hexagonal black tiles that can withstand temperatures of 1,400 °C (2,600 °F). It is designed to protect the vehicle during atmospheric entry and is to be used multiple times with minimal maintenance between flights. The silica-based tiles are attached to Starship with pins, and had small gaps in between to allow for heat expansion. After flight test 4, SpaceX added a secondary ablative layer under the primary heat shield, though this was only added to the flaps of the flight test 6 vehicle. This ablative layer is likely composed of pyron, which is similar in composition to carbon composites. The total mass of the heat shield and ablative layer of a Block 1 ship is 10.5 t (23,000 lb). After flight test 10, SpaceX added a felt, called "crunch wrap," between the gaps in between the tiles to prevent heat seeping in.
The propellant tanks on Starship are separated by a common bulkhead, similar to the ones used on the S-II and S-IVB stages on the Saturn V rocket. While Block 2 vehicles use an elliptical dome, the common and forward domes of the Block 1 design were more conical. Block 1 vehicles only had 24 stringers within the oxygen tank, while Block 2 vehicles had these added to the methane tanks. The vehicle's tanks hold 1,500 t (3,300,000 lb) of propellant, consisting of 1,170 t (2,580,000 lb) of liquid oxygen and 330 t (730,000 lb) of liquid methane.