Elon Musk views Starship primarily as a vessel bound for Mars, envisioning a future where fleets of these spacecraft transport settlers to the red planet, writes the New York Times.
Developed by Musk’s SpaceX, Starship stands out for its sheer size and power, particularly when paired with the Super Heavy booster.
Towering at 397 feet, it surpasses the Statue of Liberty in height, including its pedestal. The Super Heavy booster boasts a record-breaking 33 of SpaceX’s potent Raptor engines, capable of generating a staggering 16 million pounds of thrust during liftoff from the South Texas launchpad.
In comparison, NASA’s Space Launch System, which debuted in November 2022, holds the current record for maximum thrust at 8.8 million pounds, while the Saturn V rocket from the Apollo era pales in comparison at 7.6 million pounds.
A groundbreaking aspect of Starship is its complete reusability. Similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, the Super Heavy booster will land for reuse, while Starship will return from space, employing a belly-flop maneuver through the atmosphere akin to a skydiver before transitioning to a vertical landing.
This reusability extends to the 33 Raptor engines in the Super Heavy booster and the six additional ones in Starship itself, all of which can be reused multiple times instead of being discarded after a single flight, potentially slashing the cost of space missions to below $10 million for transporting 100 tons, as Musk has predicted.
Constructed from stainless steel, Starship and Super Heavy shine in appearance, a cost-effective alternative to materials like carbon composites. However, one side of Starship is coated in black tiles to shield it from the extreme heat encountered during atmospheric re-entry.
