You would need approximately 66+ Boeing 747-8’s to match the total takeoff thrust of Starship V3’s Super Heavy booster.
A single Raptor 3 engine is roughly equivalent to two 747-8s at full takeoff power. Starship V3’s booster has 33 of them.
NEWS: SpaceX has now invested over $15B in Starship development.
For perspective:
-Falcon 9 cost ~$400M to develop
-Starship has cost ~37x more
-11 integrated test flights completed since 2023
-V3 stack stands 408 feet tall, designed for 100+ tons to LEO
-Payload bay sized to fit 60 V3 Starlink sats per flight
The biggest R&D bet in private spaceflight history.
@teslaownersSV SpaceX is moving much faster than any government program ever could. While 15 billion is a lot of money, they are building a system to make space travel actually affordable. This is the right way to push technology forward.
Three years since the first flight of Starship, the next generation is here. New ship. New booster. New engines. New pad and new test site. SpaceX engineers are working to solve one of the most difficult engineering challenges in history: developing a fully, rapidly reusable rocket
We see our home planet as a whole, lit up in spectacular blues and browns. A green aurora even lights up the atmosphere. That's us, together, watching as our astronauts make their journey to the Moon.
Tomorrow, we launch.
At sunset tonight, Artemis II waits on the pad, ready to carry astronauts potentially farther than any humans have traveled in more than half a century.
The next era of exploration begins.
I'm honestly SHOCKED at how the general public has NO IDEA Artemis II is taking humans out to the moon and will be the furthest humans have ever flown. Every non-space nerd I've talked to has no idea. WE GOTTA GET PEOPLE STOKED!!!! THESE FOUR HUMANS ARE FLYING TO THE MOON!!!
Booster 18, the first Super Heavy V3, is beginning prelaunch testing. The first operations will test the booster's redesigned propellant systems and its structural strength
Breaking the sound barrier, again. Today, @realDonaldTrump issued an executive order that effectively lifts the 52-year ban on civil supersonic flight over land in the U.S. It directs the FAA to repeal the supersonic speed limit as long as aircraft don’t produce an audible sonic boom on the ground.
Thank you, President Trump, for unlocking the future of faster and quieter travel.