Elon Musk Reveals Plans for 500-Foot-Tall SpaceX Starship for Mars Mission

The world’s largest rocket, SpaceX’s Starship is set to get even bigger as the company continues its Project Mars. SpaceX founder Elon Musk previously told his employees that the Starship would eventually be as tall as 500 feet (150 meters), about 20 percent taller than the massive system currently aboard a Super Heavy rocket. Perhaps part of the big news in this aspect as well is that due to advances in reusability, each launch will now cost only $3 million.

According to Musk, this is less than one-third the cost of a Falcon 1 rocket launch in 2004 (adjusting for inflation. “These are unimaginable numbers,” Musk said in a release. So without breaking any physics so within this limit, we can do this. Elon Musk typically delivers updates on Starship at least once a year to highlight the progress the company is making toward its long-term plans to settle on Mars. Last year, the world saw three starship launches, solidifying the progress it has made so far.

He did not address delays in the Starship launch that contributed to pushing back the launch date for the first lunar landing under the NASA-led Artemis program. SpaceX was selected as the vendor for the Artemis 3 landing mission, initially scheduled for 2025. In January, NASA chose to push back the launch to 2026 due to various technical issues. In addition to starship readiness — requiring multiple successful launches before approval for astronaut flight — Artemis 3 faced delays due to slow spacesuit progress and Orion spacecraft problems, among other challenges.