Starship V3, taken apart

An interactive drawing of SpaceX's Starship V3: how the 124.4 m stack is put together, what rides in its payload bay, and how each of its 39 Raptor engines turns propellant into thrust.

The stack, section by section

The full stack lies on a stacking jig, the ship belly up. Point at a section, or pick one beside the drawing, and the stack comes apart so you can look inside. Zoom with the scroll wheel or a pinch.

100%Scroll to zoom · drag to pan
Starship V3 stands 124.4 m tall: a 72.3 m Super Heavy booster under a 52.1 m ship, both 9 m across and built from stainless-steel rings 1.83 m tall. Oxygen spaces are tinted blue and methane amber; in each stage the methane tank sits above the oxygen tank, so the methane reaches the engines through a tube down the middle of the oxygen tank (the cut-open windows). Numbers follow SpaceX's May 2026 figures as listed on Wikipedia: Raptor 3 at 250 tf (275 tf vacuum), 3,650 t of propellant in the booster and about 1,600 t in the ship, split here at Raptor's 3.6:1 oxygen-to-methane ratio. Engines are simplified; proportions inside the tanks, the payload dispenser and the crew cabin are approximate.

One Raptor 3, step by step

Raptor 3 hides its plumbing inside its housings. Point at the engine to take it apart, then step through how the propellant flows, or press Play.

Point at the engine to take it apart
Raptor 3 is 3.1 m long and weighs 1,525 kg. Wikipedia lists it as 1.3 m across; the nozzle here is drawn 1.2 m across at the exit, because twenty of them have to fit in a ring around the 9 m booster, and its throat is sized for the sea-level expansion ratio of 34.34, so the exit is about 5.9 times the throat's width. Assembled it shows almost no pipes: SpaceX moved most of Raptor 2's plumbing and sensors into the engine's main structure. SpaceX has not published Raptor 3's internal layout, so the arrangement inside (the oxygen turbopump and its preburner on the engine's axis, the methane pair beside it) follows the usual full-flow layout and is approximate, and the parts are simplified to turned shapes. The coloured routes are a diagram of the cycle, not the real passages: liquid oxygen blue, methane amber, oxygen-rich gas violet, methane-rich gas red. Numbers: 250 tf at sea level and 275 tf in vacuum (SpaceX, May 2026), 330 bar in service and 350 bar reached in testing, specific impulse 350 s at sea level and 380 s for the vacuum version, as listed on Wikipedia.

One flight, from the pad and back

The stack lifts off, splits in two at the edge of space, and the booster flies back to be caught by the tower that launched it. Drag the timeline or press Play; each event lights the parts it uses and links to them in Fig 1.

Times follow Flight 5 in October 2024, the first time the tower caught a booster: Max-Q at T+0:59, engine cutoff at T+2:34 with staging at about 70 km, boostback ending at T+3:41, landing burn from T+6:30 and the catch at T+6:54. Altitudes between those points are approximate, and the timeline speeds up and slows down so the whole flight plays in under a minute. The camera follows the vehicle, so heights on screen are not to scale above the tower; the booster's flip is drawn in the plane of the picture.

The ship goes on to orbit and lets the satellites go

After staging, the ship carries on alone. Its six engines push it almost to orbital speed; it coasts, burns once more to stay in orbit, then opens a slot in its side and pushes out 26 Starlink V3 satellites one at a time. Drag the timeline or press Play: the cut-open side shows the stack getting shorter.

Times follow Flight 14 on 28 September 2026, the first time Starship reached orbit, as listed on Wikipedia: engine cutoff at T+8:11, a 19-second orbit insertion burn from T+25:28 into a 262 × 275 km orbit, the 26 satellites released between T+34:18 and T+1:04:50, and an 11-second deorbit burn at T+2:12:00. Altitudes between those points are approximate, the satellites are spaced evenly between the first and the last, and the timeline speeds up and slows down so it plays in under a minute. The dispenser is drawn as in Fig 1; SpaceX has not published how it moves the stack. How fast the satellites drift away, the flame and the Earth below are drawn for clarity, not to scale.

Coming home: entry, belly flop, flip and landing

After the deorbit burn the ship falls back into the air belly first, glowing behind its heat shield, then drops flat like a skydiver, flips upright at the last moment and lands on its engines. Flight 14 came down in the Pacific; Flight 15 will try to land it back at the tower, caught by the arms that catch the booster. Switch between the two endings in the panel.

Times follow Flight 14 on 28 September 2026: plasma from about T+2:40 and entry proper from about T+2:47 (NASASpaceFlight), the landing burn stepping down from three engines to two at T+3:08:20 and to one at T+3:08:26, and splashdown at T+3:08:30 (Wikipedia). Wikipedia's table puts entry, the flip and the start of the landing burn 18 minutes earlier, which cannot fit the rest of the table; this figure takes them 18 minutes later. The belly-flop time and all altitudes are approximate. The tower catch is Flight 15's plan (Elon Musk, October 2026): SpaceX has not shown where the ship's catch pins are, so they are drawn below the forward flaps, where the arms reach them. The plasma, the flame, the clouds and the ocean are drawn for clarity, not to scale.