Super Heavy + Starship · Version 3

Starship Anatomy

The largest rocket ever built, taken apart. Click any part of the stack to open it, cut the vehicle in half to see its tanks, then follow the propellant through a Raptor 3 engine.

Stack height
Raptor 3 engines
Liftoff thrust
Payload to orbit, reusable

Every figure carries a dot: official, reported or estimate. Click a figure for its source. Data as of .

Sheet 02 · First stage

Super Heavy

A stainless-steel propellant tank taller than a 20-story building, standing on 33 Raptor engines. It lifts the whole stack for the first two and a half minutes, lets the ship light its engines on top of it, then turns around and flies itself back toward the tower that launched it.

SubjectBooster

ConfigVersion 3

Engines Raptor 3

Data as of

Sheet 03 · Second stage and spacecraft

Starship

The upper stage is also the spacecraft. It finishes the climb to orbit on its own engines, carries the payload, and comes home belly-first behind a wall of ceramic tiles before flipping upright to land.

SubjectShip

ConfigVersion 3

Engines SL + Vac

Data as of

Sheet 04 · Propulsion

Raptor 3

Every Starship flight rides on these engines. Raptor burns liquid methane and liquid oxygen in a full-flow staged combustion cycle: essentially all of both propellants passes through a turbine before it reaches the main chamber, and nothing is thrown overboard. It is the most efficient way to run a rocket's pumps, and the hardest to build. Raptor was the first engine of its kind to fly.

SubjectEngine

CycleFull-flow staged

PropellantsCH₄ / LOX

Data as of

4.1

Anatomy

Explode it, cut it open, click any component.

4.2

Full-flow staged combustion

Follow the methane and the oxygen through the engine.

4.3

Evolution and physics

Raptor 1 to 3, nozzles, plumes and thrust.

Sheet 05 · Operations

A flight, second by second

Scrub through a real V3 flight plan, from ignition on the launch mount through hot staging and the booster's return, then follow the ship to orbit, through reentry and down to its landing burn.

SubjectMission

SiteStarbase, TX

Stages2, both reusable

Data as of

Sheet 06 · References

Sources and confidence

SpaceX publishes a few headline numbers and keeps most engine internals private. Each figure on this page is tagged with how firm it is, and the internal flow details of Raptor are drawn from SpaceX statements, interviews with its engineers, and careful public analysis. Where the public record is thin, the page says so.

FiguresSourced

DiagramsSchematic

ScaleNot to scale

Data as of

Official: SpaceX, NASA or FAA Reported: credible press Estimate: analysis or derived Disputed: sources disagree