Function | General purpose Super-heavy lift launch vehicle |
---|---|
Manufacturer | |
Country of origin |
|
Project cost | At least US$5 billion[1] |
Cost per launch | $100 million (expendable)[2] |
Size | |
Height | 121.3 m (398 ft) |
Diameter | 9 m (30 ft) |
Mass | 5,000,000 kg (11,000,000 lb) |
Capacity | |
Payload to LEO | |
Mass | 100,000–150,000 kg (220,000–330,000 lb) |
Volume | 1,000 m3 (35,000 cu ft) |
Associated rockets | |
Derivative work | Starship HLS |
Comparable | |
Launch history | |
Status | In development |
Launch sites |
|
Total launches | 4 |
Success(es) | 2 (IFT-3[a] , IFT-4) |
Failure(s) | 2 (IFT-1, IFT-2) |
First flight | 20 April 2023 |
Last flight | 6 June 2024 |
First stage – Super Heavy | |
Height | 71 m (233 ft) |
Diameter | 9 m (30 ft) |
Empty mass | 200,000 kg (440,000 lb) |
Gross mass | 3,600,000 kg (7,900,000 lb) |
Propellant mass | 3,400,000 kg (7,500,000 lb) |
Powered by | 33 × Raptor engines |
Maximum thrust | 74,400 kN (16,700,000 lbf) |
Specific impulse | SL: 327 s (3.21 km/s) |
Propellant | CH4 / LOX |
Second stage – Starship | |
Height | 50.3 m (165 ft) |
Diameter | 9 m (30 ft) |
Empty mass | ~100,000 kg (220,000 lb)[3] |
Gross mass | 1,300,000 kg (2,900,000 lb)[b] |
Propellant mass | 1,200,000 kg (2,600,000 lb) |
Powered by | 3 × Raptor engines 3 × Raptor vacuum engines |
Maximum thrust | 12,300 kN (2,800,000 lbf) |
Specific impulse | SL: 327 s (3.21 km/s) vac: 380 s (3.7 km/s) |
Propellant | CH4 / LOX |
Starship is a two-stage fully reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by SpaceX. As of July 2024, it is the most massive and powerful vehicle ever to fly.[4] SpaceX has developed Starship with the intention of lowering launch costs using economies of scale.[5] SpaceX aims to achieve this by reusing both rocket stages, increasing payload mass to orbit, increasing launch frequency, creating a mass-manufacturing pipeline and adapting it to a wide range of space missions.[6][7] Starship is the latest project in SpaceX's reusable launch system development program and plan to colonize Mars.
Starship has two stages: the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft. Both stages are equipped with Raptor engines, the first mass-produced full flow staged combustion cycle engines, which burn liquid methane (natural gas) and liquid oxygen. The main structure is made from a special stainless steel alloy that SpaceX has dubbed "30X".[8] After boosting the spacecraft, Super Heavy separates after the upper stage has ignited its engines. It then performs a boostback burn, which stops all forward velocity and accelerates the booster on a trajectory towards the landing site, and finally completes a landing burn before being caught by a pair of hydraulic actuating arms attached to the launch tower.[9] After completing its mission, the Starship spacecraft reenters the atmosphere at a 60-70 degree pitch angle, once close to the landing site it performs a 'landing flip' maneuver, where the spacecraft turns from a horizontal to a vertical orientation, finally Starship slows to a hover with its engines and is also meant to be caught by the tower arms. Lunar and depot variants do not need to reenter the atmosphere and thus do not have a thermal protection system.
As of 2024, Starship is in development with an iterative and incremental approach, involving test flights of prototype vehicles. As a successor to SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, Starship will perform a wide range of space missions. For missions to further destinations, such as geosynchronous orbit, the Moon, and Mars, Starship will rely on orbital refueling from the tanker variants, a ship-to-ship propellant transfer demonstration is expected to occur in 2025 to prove out this critical capability.[10][11] Starship will deploy SpaceX's second-generation Starlink satellite constellation, and the Starship HLS variant will land astronauts on the Moon as part of the Artemis program, starting with Artemis 3 in 2026.
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