Elon Says Future Starships Will be 20% Longer

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The SpaceX Super Heavy Starship is already the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. Elon tweeted that future versions will be 10% to 20% longer. If the 20% longer development happens then the stacked rocket will be 144 meters long. Adding 24 meters would be over 60% of the length of the Space Shuttle orbiter which was 37 meters long.

The SpaceX Starship upper stage is 50 meters long. If this is made 20% longer then it would be 60 meters long. The Space Shuttle on the launch pad with its external fuel tank and side boosters was 56 meters tall (184 feet).

If the Starship payload area could be stretched by ten meters then the payload volume would increase from 1000 cubic meters to 1800 cubic meters. If fuel in Starship increased then the stretched payload volume might only increase to 1400 cubic meters.

Lighter, Simpler and More Powerful SpaceX Engines

Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk biography talked about the SpaceX 1337 having critical breakthoughs beyond the SpaceX Raptor.

Elon Musk and SpaceX looked at extreme ideas like deleting the whole hot fuel gas manifold and merging the fuel pump with the main chamber injector. Elon Musk told his team that We are on a deletion rampage”. All questionable tubes, sensors and manifolds were deleted. Elon also has looked at removing the entire skirt of the booster.

The performance of the SpaceX Raptor engines is already very good but LEET 1337 will have even higher chamber pressure which will enable more thrust. The SpaceX LEET 1337 engines will be simpler, lighter and cheaper. SpaceX will likely be able to build them at ten times the production volume from the same sized factory that will now make 4000 Raptor engines each year.

Starship has 6 engines now but Elon has said they will add 3 engines to get to 9 engines for the Starship upper stage. Future SpaceX Starship may have an additional 3 Raptor Vacuum engines for increased payload capacity.

If SpaceX Raptor engines currently cost $1 million each. There are nine engines for a Starship and having Starship at double the cost of the engines means a complete Starship costs $18 million.
If future SpaceX Raptor engines cost $500k each. Nine engines for a Starship. Starship at double the cost of the engines means a complete Starship costs $9 million.
If the SpaceX 1337 engine costs $200,000 each then nine engines on a Starship could reduce the price of a complete Starship to $3.6 million.
If the SpaceX 1337 engine costs $100,000 each then nine engines on a Starship could reduce the price of a complete Starship to $1.8 million.

Early this year, the SpaceX Raptor 3 was recently test fired and reached 18% more thrust than a Raptor 2. The Raptor 2 had 25% more thrust than the Raptor 1 and Raptor 2 was 20% lighter.

In May 2023, SpaceX reported a successful static fire of the Raptor 3 engine. The Raptor 3 achieved 350 bar (5,100 psi) for 45 seconds, producing 269 tons of thrust.

Elon talked about achieving 200 tons to orbit with full reusability using the engines tested in May, 2023. The new LEET engines should be 10-20% lighter which would save about 10 tons for more payload. Further increasing chamber pressure could give another 20% more thrust. This could enable 250 tons to orbit with full reusability.

Elon Musk described continued improvement of the Raptor 3 engine beyond levels reported in May. The Saturn V rocket generated 34.5 million newtons (7.6 million pounds) of thrust.

A 20 million pound thrust Starship booster with the improved Raptor 3 engines will have 263% of the power of the Saturn V.

12 thoughts on “Elon Says Future Starships Will be 20% Longer”

  2. I doubt the payload section would get all 10 meters, if you make it bigger, you make it heavier, and thus need more fuel.

  3. It’s unfortunate that Space X has to deal with the thing they have little control over – The FAA throwing up all sorts of conditions for flight approval. Without that they’d probably be doing another launch any day now.

    • SpaceX came up with the list of improvements that needed to be made and provided that to the FAA. The FAA received the file mid Aug and no reporting has come out that the FAA has made any additional requirements.

    • Without the FAA lives would undoubtedly be lost. It’s been proven time and time again that people will not police themselves when it comes to large amounts of profit. Ecosystem will get destroyed and people will get hurt and killed without them. Don’t hate the people trying to protect us, hate those willing to destroy for cash.

  5. If he can even get the first stage reuseable, the Starship would be an advance over Falcon with a single use 2nd stage. If he can get the 2nd stage reuseable as well, it’s a total game changer.

    Further increasing the performance is just frosting on the cake, at this point. But, who doesn’t like frosting?

  7. Better Raptor thrust to weight and modest thrust improvements mean more fuel for first stage, hence longer first stage core.

  8. He is not joking with his plans.

    That specs are nuts. Hope they will make it reliable enough though.
    Reliability is also important. They will try to lower the prices, but IMO good materials should be used, to ensure reliability and reusability. They know the best, wish them success.

    • Spaceship isn’t changing so you can use extra fuel on the stretched first stage (with higher performing Raptors) to do a better job of guaranteeing mission success if one or two of the first stage engines go out.

      So bigger can mean better odds of reaching orbit.

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