The spacecraft is designed to transport both crew and cargo to a variety of destinations, including Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars.

Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, estimated in a tweet that eight launches would be needed to completely refuel a Starship in low Earth orbit, enabling it to travel onwards.

On July 25, 2019, the Starhopper prototype performed the first successful flight at SpaceX Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas.

[2] The windward side is protected by a heat shield, which is composed of eighteen thousand[16][17] hexagonal black tiles that can withstand temperatures of 1,400 °C (2,600 °F).

[25] The propellant tanks on Starship are separated by a common bulkhead, similar to the ones used on the S-II and S-IVB stages on the Saturn V rocket.

[28] The original design only featured a single downcomer, which terminated in a distribution manifold, directing propellant to the three sea level engines and the individual RVacs.

[33] The outer wall of the aft dome is covered in an insulation material, presumably to prevent frost from building up inside the engine bay during propellant load.

[34][31] Until Starship flight test 3, this section held the hydraulic power unit, which provided the three sea level engines with thrust vector control capability.

[42][43] Before 2014, only two full-flow staged-combustion rocket engine designs had advanced enough to undergo testing: the Soviet RD-270 project in the 1960s and the Aerojet Rocketdyne Integrated Powerhead Demonstrator in the mid-2000s.

[41] The payload bay hosts the nosecone, header tanks, forward flaps, multiple COPVs, and the "pez dispenser".

[47] Fourteen COPV's are mounted in the space around the methane header tank, providing the startup gas for the engines,[48] as well as six near the pez dispenser.

[30] For a non-Starlink satellite launch, Starship is planned to have a large cargo door that opens to release payloads, similar to NASA's Space Shuttle, and close upon reentry instead of a jettisonable nosecone fairing.

For long-duration missions, such as crewed flights to Mars, SpaceX describes the interior as potentially including "private cabins, large communal areas, centralized storage, solar storm shelters, and a viewing gallery".

Doing so increases the spacecraft's mass capacity and allows it to reach higher-energy targets,[c] such as geosynchronous orbit, the Moon, and Mars.

[61][62] These launches will reportedly have to be in "rapid succession" in order to manage schedule constraints and cryogenic fuel boil-off.

[63][64][65] In October 2012, the company made the first public articulation of plans to develop a fully reusable rocket system with substantially greater capabilities than SpaceX's existing Falcon 9.

[68] SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell gave a potential payload range between 150 and 200 tons to low Earth orbit for the planned rocket.

[70] Additionally, Elon Musk provided more details about the space mission architecture, launch vehicle, spacecraft, and Raptor engines.

[74] In September 2017, at the 68th annual meeting of the International Astronautical Congress, Musk announced a new launch vehicle calling it the BFR, again changing the name, though stating that the name was temporary.

[77][78] The upper stage, known as Big Falcon Ship (BFS), included a small delta wing at the rear end with split flaps for pitch and roll control.

[79][d] In December 2018, the structural material was changed from carbon composites[80][73] to stainless steel,[81][82] marking the transition from early design concepts of the Starship.

[81][83][84] Musk cited numerous reasons for the design change; low cost and ease of manufacture, increased strength of stainless steel at cryogenic temperatures, as well as its ability to withstand high heat.

[85][83] The windward side would be cooled during entry by allowing fuel or water to bleed through micropores in a double-wall stainless steel skin, removing heat by evaporation.

The liquid-cooled windward side was changed in 2019 to use reusable heat shield tiles similar to those of the Space Shuttle.

The first tests started with the construction of the first prototype in 2018, Starhopper, which performed several static fires and two successful low-altitude flights in 2019.

Despite a full successfully ascent burn, SN8 failed during the landing attempt, due to low methane header tank pressure.

[109] Flight 3 launched from the SpaceX Starbase facility along the South Texas coast around 8:25 CDT on March 14, 2024, coincidentally the 22nd anniversary of its founding.

[112][113] It attempted to re-enter the atmosphere,[114][115] and at an altitude of around 65 km (40 mi), all telemetry from Ship 28 stopped, indicating a loss of the vehicle.

[120] A stuffed toy banana served as the zero-g indicator, becoming Starship's first payload, though it remained within the vehicle for the duration of the flight.

[120] Eric Berger claimed that, due to the success of the in-space relight, Starship would likely be "cleared to travel into orbit".