Elon Musk recently revealed that Starship will have three times more thrust than the Saturn V – the rocket that took Apollo astronauts to the Moon.

During a discussion with the Tesla Owners Silicon Valley group yesterday, Elon Musk shared many remarkable information about SpaceX’s Starship rocket development program. This is the world’s largest rocket system that is in the process of being completed and SpaceX is currently preparing for its 10th full system test flight.

According to Musk, Starship’s two most important goals for next year are to recover the rocket’s upper stage and perform in-orbit refueling. Both are key to reducing launch costs, but SpaceX has yet to make significant progress amid repeated failures during its test campaigns through 2025.

At the beginning of his speech, Musk admitted that developing Starship is a challenging task. He said: “Starship is an insane program in many respects, because it will have 2.5 times the thrust, and future versions could reach three times the thrust of the Saturn V – the largest rocket ever built and also the largest flying object in history.” He also emphasized that, besides its enormous size and nearly twice the weight of the Saturn V, what makes Starship special is the goal of complete and rapid reuse, something that has never been done before in the aerospace industry.

Musk revealed that when he first announced his plans to develop Starship, most people were skeptical and even laughed at the idea because it was too far-fetched. According to him, Starship had a “high laugh factor” when many people thought the idea was impossible.

As for the current state of affairs, Musk said the biggest problem is the rocket’s upper stage heat shield. This system, which consists of thousands of SpaceX-made heat-resistant tiles, is crucial for Starship to return to Earth intact. He described it as the program’s “biggest remaining technical challenge.”

The next goal is to make Starship’s upper stage land safely and be recovered using mechanical “chopsticks” mounted on the launch tower — a must if SpaceX wants to move toward rapid reuse. Elon Musk has expressed hope that this recovery will be successful this year or in the first half of next year at the latest.

If these technical milestones are met, SpaceX will continue to make improvements to make both the upper stage and the Super Heavy booster fully and quickly reusable, which will reduce the cost per launch and per ton of payload to even lower than the Falcon 1, SpaceX’s first single-use rocket.

Musk stressed that, if successful, the cost of sending more than 100 tons of cargo into orbit using Starship would be much lower than the cost of sending half a ton of cargo using the previous Falcon 1.

Musk also shared that a long-term strategic goal of the Starship program is to refuel in space. Instead of using the term “refueling,” he called the process “refilling,” meaning that two Starships would fly into orbit, dock, and transfer fuel from one ship to the other. After perfecting this technique, SpaceX will develop orbital refueling stations to serve NASA’s Artemis program lunar missions as well as future interplanetary trips.