SpaceX Wants to Fly Its Giant Rocket All the Way to Orbit
SpaceX plans to launch Starship on Sept. 22 in its first try at reaching orbit. The flight is expected to last about 10 hours and drop off 26 Starlink satellites Space.com.
SpaceX uses the name Starship for two parts put together: the Starship ship on top and the Super Heavy booster below SpaceX. The company says it is built to be fully reusable, like reusing a plane instead of throwing it away, and designed to carry people and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond. When fully reused, it is designed to carry more than 100 metric tonnes to orbit. A metric tonne is 1,000 kilograms. The whole stack is listed as 124 m tall and 9 m wide, taller than a 40-story building.
Starship is the top part, the ship that goes on to orbit. It is listed as 52 m tall, holding 1,600 tonnes of fuel, with 1,614 tonnes of push. That push is measured in what the company calls tf. It has six engines: three Raptor engines and three Raptor Vacuum engines, a type made for space.
Super Heavy is the bottom part, the booster that lifts at launch. It is listed as 72 m tall, holding 3,650 tonnes of fuel, with 8,240 tonnes of push. It has 33 Raptor engines that burn very cold liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Thirteen engines in the middle can move to steer. Twenty engines sit around the edge of the bottom. The booster is designed to fly back to the launch site, get caught by the launch tower, and then fly again soon.
The engines use what is called staged combustion. SpaceX says its Raptor is a reusable engine that burns methane and oxygen and has twice the push of the Merlin engine on its Falcon 9 rocket. For trips with people, the company says Starship will be able to carry up to 100 people on long trips between planets.
There is also a license step along with the hardware. The FAA requires SpaceX to apply for and get an experimental permit or permits and/or a license to operate the vehicle for the Starship Super Heavy project at the Boca Chica Launch Site FAA. At Kennedy Space Center, the FAA requires a new license or a change to an existing license to launch and land Starship-Super Heavy. The agency has issued a license change allowing Starship Flight 8. Its 2022 environmental review allowed up to five Starship launches below orbit per year. Its January decision paper for LC-39A says finishing the environmental review does not guarantee a license.
SpaceX's launches page also lists a Starlink mission dated Sept. 6, 2026.
The broader context here is how test risk and business needs are being put on the same flight. A lift of more than 100 tonnes that can be fully reused shifts the cost question from building new hardware each time to turnaround, pad availability and flight rate. Putting 26 business-related satellites on an orbit test flight uses the company's own demand to fill test capacity. The 10-hour length also points to work in orbit beyond climb and entry, including the order of drop-offs and longer checks of the vehicle.
Looking at what this means for planning, timing depends on approvals as much as engines. Catching the booster with the tower ties fast reuse to that specific ground equipment. Environmental review and licensing are separate approvals. For those watching how much money this takes, the questions are flights per pad, time between catch, fix-up and relaunch, and whether license changes keep up with design changes.
