Starship
SpaceX
SpaceX's fully reusable super-heavy-lift launch system designed to carry humans and cargo to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
Key figurescomparable across the catalogue
- Payload capacity
- 100,000 kg
Normalised to common units so this product can be compared with others in its category. The supplier's own wording is below.
As published by the supplier
- Payload to LEO (reusable)
- >100,000 kg
- Payload to LEO (expendable)
- ~150,000 kg
- Super Heavy engines
- 33× Raptor 2 (methane/LOX)
- Starship engines
- 6× Raptor (3 sea-level + 3 vacuum)
- Total liftoff thrust
- >74,000 kN
- Height (stacked)
- ~121 m
- Diameter
- 9 m
- Payload fairing volume
- ~1,000 m³
- Propellant
- Liquid methane / LOX (methalox)
- Reusability
- Fully reusable — both stages
About
Starship is SpaceX’s next-generation, fully reusable launch system consisting of the Super Heavy booster (Booster) and the Starship upper stage (Ship). It is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, designed to be capable of launching more than 100 tonnes to low Earth orbit per mission in its fully reusable configuration and delivering humans and cargo to the Moon, Mars, and interplanetary destinations.
The Super Heavy booster uses 33 Raptor engines burning liquid methane and liquid oxygen (methalox), generating over 74 MN of thrust at liftoff. The Starship upper stage carries its own six Raptor engines (three sea-level, three vacuum-optimized) and is capable of carrying passengers, cargo, or propellant for on-orbit refueling missions.
Both stages are designed to return to the launch site for catch-and-reuse: the Super Heavy booster is intended to be caught by the launch tower’s mechanical arms (‘chopstick arms’), enabling rapid turnaround. SpaceX demonstrated successful booster catch on its fifth integrated flight test in October 2024.
NASA has selected Starship as the Human Landing System (HLS) for the Artemis program to return astronauts to the lunar surface. Commercial customers including satellite operators and SpaceX’s own Starlink megaconstellation deployment are also planned users.
Documentation
No public datasheet yet — request the datasheet / ICD from the supplier.