Starship is a fully reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle that is currently being developed and manufactured by American aerospace manufacturer SpaceX. The rocket will consist of the Super Heavy booster stage and the Starship spacecraft on top and will be mainly constructed out of stainless steel. In total, the Starship is the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket ever built. Both stages combust liquid oxygen and methane with variants of Raptor engines. The booster may land on mechanical arms on the launch tower, while the spacecraft can move its flaps to control its descent. The planned tanker variant may fuel other Starships in orbit before they send 100 t (220,000 lb) to low Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars.

Such a rocket was first outlined by SpaceX as early as 2005, with its design and name changed frequently. In July 2019, Starhopper, a prototype vehicle with extended fins, was able to successfully hover. In May 2021, Starship SN15 successfully flew to 10 km (6 mi) and landed, after four failed attempts by previous prototypes. As of May 2022, the first Starship rocket is planned to launch 2022 pending regulatory approval.[1] The rocket's development is iterative and incremental with the testing and manufacturing of prototypes. However, critics have noted its potential damage to the natural and social environment around the sites.

SpaceX plans to construct launch sites at Starbase, Kennedy Space Center, and two offshore launch platforms. In the near term, Starship may deploy satellites and space probes, serving space tourists, and explore the Moon via the Artemis program. Further, the rocket may travel between locations on Earth and aid SpaceX's ambition of colonizing Mars in the future. Such operation level is only possible due to reduced launch cost.

Elon Musk seems pretty proud of his company SpaceX's new rocket engines.

This week, Musk showed off a batch of the new Raptor 2 engines at the SpaceX's Starbase facility in Texas, where they will be used on the first orbital flight of the company's Starship mega-rocket later this year.

"Raptor 2 rocket engines at Starbase, each producing over half a million pounds (230 tons) of force," Musk wrote in a Twitter post on Tuesday (April 26). Musk's photo showed what appeared to be over a dozen of the new rocket engines, but his Twitter fans saw something else: evil Daleks from Doctor Who.

To be clear, Elon Musk has not created a race of evil warriors that cry "Exterminate!" as they take over the world. The Raptor 2 will be the workhorse engine for SpaceX's Starship rockets and their massive Super Heavy boosters.

Each Super Heavy booster will be powered by 33 Raptor 2 engines while the Starship vehicle will use nine Raptor 2 engines of its own. Like SpaceX's veteran Merlin engines on its Falcon 9 rockets, the Raptor 2 is designed to be reusable, as are the Starship and Super Heavy vehicles.
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