SpaceX · USA
Starship
The largest and most powerful rocket ever flown, designed so both stages fly home to be reused: the booster is caught by its launch tower, and the ship is meant to land itself.
Figures are for the third version (V3), which first flew in May 2026. Starship is still flying test missions; no ship has yet landed for reuse.
How it works
5 ideas that make Starship different
Caught by the tower
Instead of landing on legs, the Super Heavy booster flies back to its launch tower, where two giant arms catch it in mid-air. Leaving legs off the rocket saves weight and lets it be set straight back on the pad.
39 engines
The booster fires 33 Raptor engines at once, and the ship six more. With so many, the flight computers can adjust thrust if one fails and still complete the climb.
Fuelled by methane
Raptor burns liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Methane burns cleanly, which suits reuse, and it can in principle be made on Mars from carbon dioxide and water, part of SpaceX's long-term plan.
Steel, not carbon fibre
Starship is built from stainless steel. It's heavier than carbon fibre but cheap, easy to weld, and stays strong at both the very cold temperatures of liquid oxygen and the heat of re-entry.
Still a test programme
Starship flies test missions that sometimes end in explosions. SpaceX builds and flies rapidly, learning from each failure, rather than perfecting a design on the ground first.
Watch it launch
Starship - The Holy Grail of Rocketry — SpaceX (official). SpaceX's film on making a fully reusable rocket.
Full specifications
Compare with other RocketsFigures are the maker's own unless marked as a third-party figure. Nothing below has been independently verified.
Identity
Size and lift
What this means
Low Earth orbit (LEO) is roughly 200–2,000 km up, where most satellites and space stations fly. Payload to LEO is the standard way to compare a rocket's lifting power. Recovering a booster costs payload, because it must keep fuel back to fly home and land.
Propulsion
What this means
Thrust is the push the engines produce. To leave the pad, it must exceed the rocket's weight; the extra is what accelerates it upward. 1 meganewton (MN) is roughly the force needed to hold up 100 tonnes.
What this means
Most new reusable rockets burn liquid methane with liquid oxygen. It burns cleanly, leaving little soot in the engines, so they can fly again with less refurbishment. Kerosene is denser and long proven but leaves soot behind; hydrogen gives the most energy per kilogram but needs huge, very cold tanks.
Reuse and record
What this means
Most rockets throw their stages away after one flight, like flying a plane once and scrapping it. Landing and reusing the booster, the biggest and most expensive part, is what has made launches more frequent and cheaper over the past decade.
Sources
Last checked 2026-10-31.