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Starship: Built to Be Fully Reusable

Two Giant Stages, Both Meant to Land

Starship is a two-part rocket system made of the Super Heavy booster on the bottom and the Starship upper stage on top, and unlike almost every rocket before it, SpaceX designed both halves to fly back and land instead of being thrown away after one use. That full reusability goal is the central idea behind the entire vehicle's blunt, sturdy shape.

Stainless Steel Instead of Lightweight Composites

Rather than the carbon-fiber composites or aluminum-lithium alloys used on many modern rockets, Starship is built from stainless steel, a material SpaceX chose because it stays strong at both the freezing temperatures of cryogenic fuel and the extreme heat of atmospheric reentry. Steel is also cheaper and easier to weld quickly, which matters for a company trying to build and test rockets at a rapid pace.

Flaps That Work Like Airplane Wings

Starship's four hinged flaps, two smaller ones near the nose and two larger ones near the base, tilt during descent through the atmosphere to control the vehicle's fall the way a skydiver adjusts their body position to steer. This flap-controlled belly-flop maneuver lets Starship slow itself down using atmospheric drag before flipping upright for the final landing burn.

Dozens of Engines Working Together

The Super Heavy booster is designed to fly with more than 30 Raptor engines clustered at its base, far more than the nine engines on a Falcon 9 first stage, giving it enough combined thrust to lift the massive fully stacked vehicle off the pad. Losing a small number of those engines mid-flight still allows the booster to complete its job, similar to the built-in redundancy SpaceX first proved on Falcon 9.

Catching a Falling Booster With Mechanical Arms

Instead of legs, the Super Heavy booster is designed to be caught in mid-air by giant mechanical arms mounted on the launch tower nicknamed "chopsticks," a landing method SpaceX first successfully demonstrated in October 2024. Skipping the weight and complexity of landing legs is expected to make the booster lighter and quicker to prepare for its next flight.

A Rocket Meant for the Moon and Mars

NASA selected a version of Starship to land astronauts on the moon under the Artemis program, while SpaceX has stated a long-term goal of eventually using the same vehicle to carry crews toward Mars. Both missions depend on Starship's enormous cargo capacity and on proving that a rocket this large can be refueled and reflown quickly enough to make deep-space missions practical.

Refueling in Orbit Before Heading Onward

Because a single Starship cannot carry enough propellant to reach the moon and land while still having fuel to return, SpaceX plans to launch separate tanker versions of the vehicle that dock with a waiting Starship in orbit and transfer propellant between them. That orbital refueling technique has never been done at this scale before and is considered one of the biggest technical hurdles standing between Starship and a crewed lunar landing.