Elon Musk’s SpaceX is on a mission to Mars with its massive Starship rocket system. The visionary entrepreneur envisions a future where fleets of Starships will carry settlers to the red planet, and to achieve this goal, the Starship has to be big – really big.
Standing at a towering 397 feet tall, the Starship is the tallest rocket ever built, surpassing even the iconic Statue of Liberty. What’s more, the Super Heavy booster that will propel the Starship into space boasts a staggering 33 powerful Raptor engines, generating a mind-blowing 16 million pounds of thrust at full throttle.
In comparison, NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which recently made its debut flight, pales in comparison with a maximum thrust of 8.8 million pounds. Even the legendary Saturn V rocket that took astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program falls short with a maximum thrust of 7.6 million pounds.
But perhaps the most groundbreaking feature of the Starship is its reusability. Both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship itself are designed to be entirely reusable, drastically cutting down the cost of space travel. Elon Musk predicts that it could cost less than $10 million to send 100 tons of payload into orbit using the Starship system.
To withstand the extreme heat of re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, one side of the Starship is coated in black tiles, while the rest of the spacecraft is made of stainless steel for cost-effectiveness. With its revolutionary design and capabilities, the Starship is poised to revolutionize space travel and pave the way for humanity’s journey to Mars.
