--- title: "Elon Musk: SpaceX Is Starting Work on Starship Super Heavy Booster" description: "SpaceX  is planning to start assembling a prototype of the massive Super Heavy rocket booster for Starship as soon as \"this week\" according to Elon Musk." date: "2020-09-01" modified: "2020-09-01" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-spacex-starship-super-heavy-booster" categories: - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "Space" - "SpaceX" - "Starship" - "The Industrialists" tags: - "elon musk" - "SpaceX" - "Starship" - "super heavy" - "the digest" --- # Elon Musk: SpaceX Is Starting Work on Starship Super Heavy Booster ![SpaceX  is planning to start assembling a prototype of the massive Super Heavy rocket booster for Starship as soon as "this week" according to Elon Musk.]() *\Image: SpaceX\* ## Super Heavy As soon as "this week," according to CEO Elon Musk, SpaceX is planning to start the assembly of a prototype of the massive Super Heavy rocket booster that's meant to carry its [Starship]() into orbit. Musk revealed the plan on Monday at the virtual Humans to Mars summit. "That's gonna be pretty cool," he said, as [quoted by *CNET*](). The company's gigantic Starship spacecraft is designed to be large enough to carry up to 100 passengers as far as Mars — meaning its rocket boosters will have to be massive as well to provide enough thrust. ## Super Big The Super Heavy will be taller than an entire two-stage Falcon 9 or even Falcon Heavy rocket, as [*Teslarati* points out](), and will be the largest liquid rocket booster ever built. In fact, according to Musk, a Super Heavy booster will have more than twice the thrust of the Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo astronauts to the Moon — and more than three times the thrust of the company's own Falcon Heavy. ## Super Powerful Musk revealed that the Super Heavy booster will have 28 Raptor engines, a small downgrade from the originally planned 31. "That's still a lot of engines. We'll be cranking up the thrust on those engines," Musk promised, adding that a single Raptor engine could lift 200 times its own weight. It's anybody's best guess as to when the first Starship will get to orbit the Earth. "This is uncharted territory," Musk admitted. "Nobody's ever made a fully reusable orbital rocket." **READ MORE:** [SpaceX Super Heavy booster assembly to start “this week,” says Elon Musk]() \[*Teslarati*\] **More on Starship:** *[SpaceX Is Planning to Fly Its Starship Prototype This Weekend]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()