SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Details How The New Starship Version Will Be Different From The Old

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Friday detailed the differences in design of its new Starship version as compared to the last.

What Happened: “Version 2 of the ship holds more propellant, reduces dry mass and improves reliability,” Musk wrote on X, formerly Twitter. He was responding to a user seeking answers on the new and upcoming version of the launch vehicle.

Musk, in a later post, also wrote that Starship is intended to carry a lot of people on tens of thousands of flight. “…so needs to be extremely reliable over time. It will be,” Musk wrote.

In case of an isolated engine failure, multiple engines increase reliability, Musk explained. With 33 engines on the Super Heavy booster, which is even more than the 30 engines on Soviet N1 first stage, Starship is aiming to be reliable, Musk added.

Why It Matters: The curiosity around the new version comes after Musk shared a photo of starships at Starbase captioned, “…the last of V1.” SpaceX initially presented the V1.0 prototype of the Starship in 2020. Although various Starship prototypes have been constructed previously, the V1 prototype was specifically designed for an orbit test flight.

SpaceX's Starship is a pivotal element in Musk's vision of landing humans on the Moon and Mars.

The Starship had its second liftoff on Nov. 18, successfully navigating stage separation. However, the booster experienced an explosion shortly afterward, and the spacecraft lost contact with SpaceX after reaching an altitude of nearly 150 kilometers. It eventually failed to fulfill the test launch's ultimate goal of a round-trip flight to space with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

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Image created with artificial intelligence on MidJourney and Official SpaceX Photos on Flickr