Starship is a whopper: fully stacked it stands about 120m-tall.
Compare that with Nasa’s Saturn V (111m), which launched the Apollo missions; and the test version of Nasa’s Artemis rocket, or Space Launch System (SLS) (98m), which will eventually be returning astronauts to the Moon.
In fact, it’s the biggest rocket ever built – and the most powerful too. It’s designed to have up to 75 meganewtons, 17 million pounds, of thrust (the force that propels the rocket through the air). That’s getting on for twice as much as the SLS.
And this is key, because the more thrust a rocket has, the more weight it can lift off the ground – so that means it can carry more stuff into space.
SpaceX estimates it can put up to 150 tonnes in the spacecraft’s reusable form – be that cargo or people.
