Starship is SpaceX's launch system for Earth orbit, the Moon and Mars. Super Heavy is the booster, and the ship, also called Starship, rides on top. The ship can act as a tanker, passing propellant to another ship in orbit, or as a lander for NASA's Artemis programme. Both stages are designed to be reusable.
Most of the vehicle is stainless steel, and SpaceX describes the metal as non-toxic and inert. For re-entry, the ship is covered in silica tiles, a material with properties similar to glass. Early ships carried about 18,000 hexagonal tiles, rated to 1,400 degrees Celsius and held on with pins.
Application
SpaceX's fully reusable launch system for Earth orbit, the Moon and Mars. Super Heavy is the first stage and Starship is the second stage, which can also act as a tanker or a lunar lander for NASA's Artemis programme.
Photos
How it is built
Super Heavy booster
Super Heavy's two tanks, liquid oxygen and liquid methane, share a dividing wall and hold 3,650 tonnes of propellant. Electric actuators swivel the inner 13 of its Raptor engines to steer. Grid fins guide it back to the launch tower, whose mechanical arms caught a booster for the first time on the fifth flight test.
Liquid oxygen and liquid methane tanks with a common bulkhead
Raptor engines (x33)
Electric-actuator thrust vector control on the inner 13 engines
Grid fins (three, electrically actuated)
Launch-tower catch arms (mechanical arms)
The ship
The ship's main tanks hold 1,500 tonnes of propellant. Six Raptor engines, three for sea level and three for vacuum, sit in a shielded compartment at the base. Small header tanks at the nose end of the payload bay hold propellant for re-entry and landing.
Main propellant tanks (liquid oxygen and liquid methane)
Raptor engines (x6: three sea-level, three vacuum)
Engine shielding compartment
Header tanks
Heat shield and flaps
Silica tiles, held to the stainless-steel skin with pins, protect the ship on re-entry. Four flaps control the descent, two forward and two aft, the aft pair mounted beside the engine bay and oxygen tank. SpaceX redesigned the forward flaps for the second version of the ship.
Heat tiles
Heat-shield tile attachment pins
Flaps (four)
Forward flaps (two)
Aft flaps (two)
Payload bay
The payload fairing is a clamshell 9 metres across. A door folds into the payload bay to release payloads, and Starlink satellites are deployed from a slot dispenser SpaceX calls the PEZ dispenser. Other payloads separate from the ship on an adapter made for each mission.
Payload fairing (clamshell)
Payload bay door
PEZ dispenser
Mission-unique payload adapter
Moon lander version
The lander SpaceX is developing for NASA's Artemis III and IV missions has a crew cabin and two airlocks for moonwalks. An elevator below the cabin, about 115 feet above the ground, lowers crew and equipment to the surface. It also has landing legs and a deployable solar array.
Crew compartment
Airlock(s)
Elevator from the airlock deck to the lunar surface
Landing legs
Solar array (deployable)
Where the parts areNumber of parts we have listed in each group
Human landing system variant11
Super Heavy structure8
Starship propulsion6
Starship payload4
Super Heavy propulsion4
Starship aerodynamic control3
Ground systems3
Starship thermal protection2
Vehicle structure1
Thermal protection1
What it is made of
Stainless steel
The main construction material of the vehicle. SpaceX describes it as non-toxic and inert.
Silica heat-shield tiles
Heat tiles on the ship, attached to the steel with pins. SpaceX says silica has properties similar to glass.
How it connects to other things
Super Heavy carries 33 of SpaceX's own Raptor engines and the ship six, three of them vacuum versions. NASA says the system draws on the flight heritage of Falcon and Dragon. As the Artemis lander it belongs to NASA's Human Landing System programme, and it must dock with Orion when the crew returns from the lunar surface. SpaceX also plans to deploy full-size Starlink V2 satellites with it.
Planned lunar-lander ride; suit-lander integration tested on Starship development hardware; not flown. 2026 plans move the first lunar landing to Artemis IV
SpaceX does not say which grade of stainless steel it uses. Nor does it say what the tanks, engines, flaps and grid fins are made of, or who makes the tiles. The design also changes from one version to the next, so any one description may not match every ship that has flown.
The detailed data
What is written above is built from these numbers and quotes. Each row links to the page it was taken from. Get all of it as JSON, or ask our MCP server.
Features
Both stages designed to be reusable
Crew configuration for up to 100 people to LEO, Moon and Mars
Propellant transfer in orbit for higher payload mass
Specifications
What
Value
Stack height
about 400 ft (Starship on Super Heavy), design figure
Super Heavy engines
up to 37 Raptor
Propellant
liquid oxygen and liquid methane
Super Heavy lift-off thrust
74 MN with 37 engines
Starship lander height
about 171 ft
Mass to LEO
100+ t (reusable baseline)
Payload fairing diameter
9 m outer diameter
Payload envelope
8 m diameter, up to 22 m tall extended volume
Super Heavy booster size (NASA)
9 m diameter, 70 m long
HLS Starship size (NASA)
9 m diameter, 50 m long
HLS elevator height above ground
about 115 ft
Ship propellant load
1,500 t (3,300,000 lb)
Booster propellant load
3,650 t (8,050,000 lb)
Ship heat-shield tile count (Block 1 era)
about 18,000 hexagonal tiles, rated to 1,400 C
Ship dry mass (SpaceX CEO statement, 2021)
about 100 t (220,000 lb)
Ship Block 2 height
52.1 m (171 ft)
Block 3 booster height
72.3 m
Block 3 booster thrust (expected)
80.8 MN (18,200,000 lbf)
First fully stacked orbital-class launch
20 April 2023
All 33 booster engines lit for a full-duration burn
18 November 2023
Electronic thrust vector control first flown
14 March 2024 (third flight test)
First booster catch
fifth flight test
Materials in detail
Each material named in the sources: where it is used here, which other products use it, and its key numbers when its material page exists.
silica
silica-heat-shield-tile
Used in 1 partHeat tiles
Material page coming soon
stainless steel (grade not stated in this source)
stainless-steel
Used in 1 partStarship vehicle (overall construction)
Only two materials are stated in primary sources: stainless steel as the main construction and silica heat tiles. No part-level list or grades are published. Components, suppliers and links were added from public sources. A material is left blank where no source states it.
No grades, tank, engine or control-surface materials in the primary sources read. More detail: SpaceX publishes only a six-page user's guide for Starship; it gives no part list or materials. NASA documents describe the human-landing-system variant (crew cabin, airlocks, elevator, landing legs, solar array, docking) but give no materials or suppliers. Block 1, Block 2 and Block 3 hardware differ (flaps, tile layout, grid-fin count, hot-stage ring, thrust plate); the Wikipedia statements used here are not tied to one block except where stated, and the FAA documents that would fix the as-flown configuration returned HTTP 403. Not found in any readable source: stainless steel grades (the entry deliberately omits blog-level 304L/301/30X claims), tank and bulkhead alloys, tile supplier and tile count for later blocks, flap actuator hardware, thrust-plate material, header-tank construction, and any named suppliers. The user's guide is cited by its working relayto copy because the spacex.com PDF address now returns 404. Quotes from the NASA HLS papers and the NASA OIG report were machine-checked against the PDF text; quotes from Wikipedia, the NASA selection page and Spaceflight Now came through a text extractor and were not machine-checked. More detail: SpaceX publishes only a six-page user's guide for Starship; it gives no part list or materials. NASA documents describe the human-landing-system variant (crew cabin, airlocks, elevator, landing legs, solar array, docking) but give no materials or suppliers. Block 1, Block 2 and Block 3 hardware differ (flaps, tile layout, grid-fin count, hot-stage ring, thrust plate); the Wikipedia statements used here are not tied to one block except where stated, and the FAA documents that would fix the as-flown configuration returned HTTP 403. Not found in any readable source: stainless steel grades (the entry deliberately omits blog-level 304L/301/30X claims), tank and bulkhead alloys, tile supplier and tile count for later blocks, flap actuator hardware, thrust-plate material, header-tank construction, and any named suppliers. The user's guide is cited by its working relayto copy because the spacex.com PDF address now returns 404. Quotes from the NASA HLS papers and the NASA OIG report were machine-checked against the PDF text; quotes from Wikipedia, the NASA selection page and Spaceflight Now came through a text extractor and were re-checked in a second fetch pass but not against a saved copy of the page.
