SpaceX Starship Explained: The Rocket Designed to Reach Mars

When SpaceX's Starship lifted off for the first time on April 20, 2023, it didn't make it to orbit. The vehicle spun out of control and was intentionally destroyed less than four minutes after launch. By almost any conventional measure, that mission was a failure. SpaceX called it a success — and they weren't wrong.

That's the nature of Starship. It is the most ambitious rocket ever built, and understanding it requires setting aside most of what you thought you knew about how rockets work.

What Is Starship?

Starship is a fully reusable two-stage launch vehicle developed by SpaceX. It consists of two parts: Super Heavy, the massive first-stage booster, and Ship, the upper stage that carries payloads or crew. Together they stand approximately 120 metres tall — taller than the Statue of Liberty with its pedestal, and more than 20 metres taller than NASA's Saturn V moon rocket.

Super Heavy is powered by 33 Raptor engines, each burning liquid methane and liquid oxygen. At liftoff, the booster produces around 74 meganewtons of thrust — roughly twice the thrust of the Saturn V. Ship carries six additional Raptor engines, three optimised for sea-level operation and three for vacuum.

The choice of methane as a propellant was deliberate. Most rockets burn either kerosene (like SpaceX's own Falcon 9) or liquid hydrogen (like NASA's Space Launch System). Methane sits between the two in terms of energy density, but crucially, it can theoretically be synthesised on Mars using carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere and water ice buried beneath the surface. If SpaceX's long-term goal is a self-sustaining city on Mars, Starship needs to refuel there — and methane makes that possible.

How Full Reusability Works

Falcon 9, SpaceX's workhorse rocket, is already partially reusable — the first-stage booster lands on a drone ship or return-to-launch-site pad after every flight. But the second stage and payload fairing are either expended or have to be fished out of the ocean. Falcon 9 reusability is impressive; Starship reusability is a different order of magnitude.

Both Super Heavy and Ship are designed to be caught and relaunched with minimal refurbishment. Not landed — caught. The launch tower at SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas is equipped with two enormous mechanical arms, nicknamed "chopsticks," mounted on a structure called Mechazilla. After Super Heavy separates from Ship and descends back toward the launch site, it is caught mid-air by these arms as it approaches the tower.

The first successful booster catch happened on October 13, 2024, during Starship's fifth integrated flight test. Cameras streamed the moment live: a 70-metre-tall rocket, weighing hundreds of tonnes, slowing from hypersonic speeds and descending precisely enough to be gripped by two steel arms. It is one of the most extraordinary things that has ever happened in aerospace engineering.

Ship — the upper stage — follows a different profile. After delivering its payload, it performs a belly-flop manoeuvre through the atmosphere, using its body as a heat shield, before righting itself and landing vertically. The eventual plan is to catch Ship on the tower as well.

Why Does Any of This Matter?

The economics of space travel have historically been defined by one brutal equation: everything you launch is either destroyed or must be brought back at enormous cost. A Falcon 9 first-stage booster costs roughly $30–40 million to manufacture. Reusing it drops that cost to the price of propellant and refurbishment — a few hundred thousand dollars per flight. Starship is designed to take that logic to its conclusion.

SpaceX's stated goal is a Starship flight cost of around $10 million — eventually falling to $2 million or less as flight rates increase. Falcon 9 lists at $67 million per launch. The gap is enormous, and it doesn't exist because of any single breakthrough. It is the compounding effect of full reusability, high-volume manufacturing in stainless steel (far cheaper than carbon fibre), and a rapid iteration philosophy that treats early failures as data rather than disasters.

Starship and NASA's Artemis Programme

In April 2021, NASA selected Starship as the Human Landing System for the Artemis programme — the agency's effort to return astronauts to the Moon for the first time since 1972. This came as a surprise to many in the industry: NASA also had bids from Blue Origin and Dynetics, both of which proposed more conventional designs. SpaceX won on price and capability.

Under the Artemis plan, Starship will not launch directly from Earth to the Moon. Instead, a Starship tanker variant will be launched first to refuel an orbiting Starship HLS (Human Landing System) variant. Astronauts will then travel to lunar orbit aboard NASA's Orion capsule on a Space Launch System rocket, rendezvous with Starship HLS, and ride it to the lunar surface.

The programme has faced delays, partly driven by Starship's own development timeline and partly by the complexity of orbital propellant transfer — a technology that has never been demonstrated at this scale. But progress is undeniable. Each integrated flight test has achieved more than the last.

What Comes Next

As of mid-2026, SpaceX is working toward routine orbital flights of Starship, Starlink satellite deployment using Starship (which can carry far more satellites per launch than Falcon 9), and the demonstration of orbital propellant transfer required for Artemis. The company has also announced plans for point-to-point Earth travel using Starship — flying passengers between cities in under an hour — though that application remains years away from commercial service.

The more immediate question is when Starship will begin generating revenue. Every flight so far has been a test. The first paying payload — a batch of Starlink satellites — is expected to fly once SpaceX is confident in the vehicle's reliability. After that, Starship opens the door to payload sizes, orbital architectures, and mission types that simply weren't possible before. Space telescopes larger than Hubble. Lunar surface missions. Eventually, Mars.

Starship is not a product yet. It is a programme — methodical, expensive, iterative, and pointed at a destination that no rocket has ever reached with humans aboard. Whether it gets there on SpaceX's schedule or a decade later, the vehicle it becomes will almost certainly define what space travel looks like for the rest of this century.