What we learned from the SpaceX Mars game plan talk

Written By Logan Smith

Mars-bound Starship

Introduction

SpaceX chief engineer and CEO, Elon Musk, gave an awe-inspiring speech from the Starfactory in Starbase, Texas. This speech was everything that I and other space optimists wanted, a real insight into what future Mars missions and colonisation will look like. I say “will” and not “might”, as we saw an incredibly realistic timeframe given from Musk. Also, I and many others are dreamers and believers; we have desires and hopes for mankind's future. Now, it's our time to thrive and live out there, among the stars.

The presentation started with an uplifting hype reel showing unbelievable footage of many aspects of the Starship programme so far. From welding robots to booster catch, this hype video had it all.

Following the hype video, we were treated to a shot of a healthy and sharp-looking Elon Musk, standing next to the first V3 Starship hot-stage ring (HSR). This HSR will be utilised on the next-generation Starship vehicle, a vehicle designed for rapid reuse and, most importantly, Mars. Many details on the V3 Starship were revealed during the first half of the speech, from vehicle stats to Raptor 3, to mass production and more! Let's get straight into it and discuss what's next for the biggest and most powerful rocket on Earth.

V3 Starship Super Heavy

As mentioned previously, the first thing we were treated to was a good view of the next generation HSR. This iteration of the HSR is designed with reusability in mind. A large truss-like ring encages a new forward dome design that’s intended to withstand the heat and forces of the hot-staging manoeuvre hundreds of times. This ring closer resembles the Soyuz hot-staging interstage more than the current HSR adapter on today's Starship. This allows more room for the hot gas to escape, causing less damage to the forward dome on the booster. The increased height of the ring allows for more clearance between the forward dome and sea-level engines. This clearance should significantly decrease stress on the booster, allowing for reuse. It may seem unlikely to some that the ship firing directly into the top of the booster is feasible for reusability, but what some might not know is that the ships sea-level Raptors gimbal outwards during this manoeuvre, meaning a lot of the heat and thrust will be directed straight out through the vented interstage. Unlike today's HSR, this version will not be jettisoned. It's jettisoned today due to it likely being ripped from the booster on flight 3, causing instability during descent. This theory is backed up by the fact SpaceX decided to jettison the ring from flight 4 onwards. (I highly suggest watching CSI Starbase's investigation into this theory; link at the bottom of the article.) Also, due to hot-staging being a change to the staging design (introduced following flight 1) and it not being originally planned to be a part of Starship, the improvised version we see on flights now is incredibly heavy compared to the rest of the booster on descent.

V3 Super Heavy Boosters Hot-Stage Ring, from SpaceX’s Mars update.

Now we’ve got the big obvious change out of the way (it was quite literally right in front of us), let's talk about some statistics and visual changes we will see on the next generation Starship. V3 Starship is set to fly on flight 13 (provided no V2 ships get scrapped or don’t fly), so it's closer than you think. As most of you should know by now, Starship is made up of 2 stages: the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage. Let's take a look at Super Heavy first.

V3 Super Heavy Booster

Next-gen Super Heavy will boast a substantial performance increase, including more thrust, more propellant and decreased mass. SpaceX is all about optimisation, and oh boy have they optimised the crap out of Super Heavy. As discussed, the HSR has been integrated into the booster, reducing mass and allowing for more ‘breathing space’ during hot-staging. This upgrade saves about 20t of mass on the upper portion of the vehicle (unknown what the new mass of the V3 HSR is; the 20t reduction is based on removing the current HSR).

The next noticeable change is the fact we actually have a missing grid fin. This may seem, to be honest, kind of goofy at first. I use the word goofy because the layout of the 3 grid fins is kind of weird and very asymmetric. The best way to describe it is to imagine 4 grid fins 90 degrees apart, then just delete one. There are 2 above each catch point, then another sat evenly between the other 2 grid fins. Kind of weird to look at, but SpaceX has their reasons to go down to 3, and it does save them 3t of mass by just deleting 1 grid fin that clearly isn't needed. Another asymmetric change to the vehicle is located towards the bottom third. We can easily identify the change in location of the chines. These chines house commodities, like COPVs, CO₂ tanks and batteries. They also provide some aerodynamic lift on ascent and stability on descent. As expected, there are more visual details to mention; the next one you can see is the decals and paint job on the bottom of the booster. This might just be for the presentation and might not actually come to exist on the booster, but it still looks pretty badass. The little SpaceX logo between the 90-degree spread chines is a beautiful touch too.

Super Heavy current (right) vs next-gen (left) comparison, made by myself

Now an absolutely massive change can be seen if you take a quick look at that engine section. If you can’t see it, I’ll help you out… no engine shielding! That’s right, next-gen Super Heavy will not require engine shielding due to the simplicity and robustness of V3 Raptor! This change significantly reduces mass on the vehicle by about 33t (40t total including ship mass reductions). This protective shielding is used to protect the vehicle in flight from any potential situation where RUDs may occur and protect it from re-entry heating. As Elon put it, “the booster will be naked and bathed in hot plasma”. We will talk more about how revolutionary and alien tech like the V3 Raptor truly is after we discuss spec and statistic improvements.

Next-gen Super Heavy’s engine section, taken from Elons speech.

As I said, V3 boasts increased performance, efficiency and mass reductions. With the introduction of Raptor 3, Super Heavy's liftoff thrust increases by 740tf, taking the total thrust on liftoff to 8240tf. This is significant in increasing payload to orbit on the next version, allowing for Starship to take 200t to orbit all while being fully and rapidly reusable (touch wood). Another neat thing is that if they wanted to expend a ship for one reason or another, a fully expended starship can take up to 400t to LEO, which is just shy of the mass of the International Space Station, truly revolutionary and mind-boggling. Super Heavy has an increased height of 1.3m compared to the current version of the booster, taking it to a total height of 72.3m. With this slightly increased height and some changes to the tank domes (speculating, but it looks like the bottom of the LOX tank sits lower on the vehicle due to the stringer just above the engine section), Super Heavy has a propellant capacity of 3650t (Elon said they can push this by +50t), a healthy increase from the current 3400t of propellant. Although it wasn’t mentioned during this speech, based on observations from the spaceflight community, Super Heavy will have 2 Quick Disconnect (QD) ports for faster prop load times during pre-launch procedures. During this talk, Elon also nullified (for now) the 35 Raptor Super Heavy theory by announcing V4 onwards. Starships will have 42 engines in total (booster plus ship) by adding 3 vacuum engines onto the upper stage. This means for now, Super Heavy will keep its 33 engines. I’ll briefly touch upon Super Heavy versions beyond V3, as some details were mentioned by Elon, but take these numbers as an estimate/best-case scenario for now. Elon stated that future Super Heavy iterations could have upwards of 10,000tf on liftoff. This is why I added the “for now” in brackets when I mentioned the dismissal of 35 engines; unless there's another huge breakthrough in the Raptor development, I struggle to see how they reach 10,000tf without adding a few engines to the booster or increasing the booster's diameter (a topic that we can discuss at a later date). Future versions will also have around 4000t of propellant capacity, increasing performance to potentially 300t to orbit (as per the Mars timeline graphic during the presentation).

That’s pretty much all that was mentioned about the next-gen booster, so let's move on to the next-gen Starship upper stage. Just like we did for the booster, let's take a look at all the visual changes we can see before we get into the more technical stuff.

V3 Starship Spacecraft

V3 Starship upper stage render from SpaceX

There aren't too many visual changes on the ship as there were on Super Heavy, but there are still some things to note. Starship V3's heat shield has a much prettier appearance, with a lot of focus on making the ship look sleeker. We’ve already started seeing this on current ships, but V3 just looks incredible based off renders. The tapered edge of the tiles just makes the vehicle look so much more complete and badass. As we all know, it's obviously super important for a Mars vehicle to look badass. Unlike the booster, Ship will just keep the one QD port, although I’d expect it would have a better fill rate than the current QD; otherwise, upgrading to 2 ports on Super Heavy would be kind of pointless to an extent. If the renders are accurate, the external raceways on the current ship have been removed. Not sure why, but I'm sure SpaceX would have their reasons. The Starlink antennas also appear to have moved onto the actual heat shield side of the vehicle, as you can see them just underneath the forward flaps. However, I wouldn’t trust the render too much for the finer details, as this render doesn’t have the ship catch points on it.

As seen in the render to the left, Starship's payload door design for payloads other than Starlink has changed (left is the old door from previous renders, and right is taken from the Mars presentation). This change in render is a good sign that SpaceX are working on this door in some way, behind closed doors. I'm not sure exactly when we will see the first vehicle with this payload door (next year potentially), but I can't wait until we do see it because it looks awesome!

One of the biggest challenges to Ship, which according to Elon “will take years to hone in”, is the development of a rapidly reusable orbital heat shield capable of Earth and Mars atmospheric entry. The main reason for such difficulty so far in getting this heat shield to work as intended is due to the little material that can actually continuously withstand entry conditions. The few materials that can withstand the stresses are advanced ceramics, glass, alumina and carbon, according to Musk. SpaceX uses a combination of these in their heat shield, which is made up of around 14000 hexagonal tiles. The best way to develop these tiles is from gathering real-world data (the mantra for Starship), and the tiles team at Starbase has been starved of this data after 3 failed re-entries so far in 2025. Behind the scenes, SpaceX are actively testing their heat shield materials in simulated Martian environments. Mars entry has many more challenges for Starship than Earth’s entry. One of these challenges being (as stated in the image below) the large amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere of Mars. In Elon's words, “When CO₂ turns into plasma on Mars entry, there is 2-3x more oxygen than on Earth entry. So the CO₂ basically wants to oxidise the hell out of the heat shield.” This makes Mars entry super challenging and extreme, especially when you mix in other factors like the lack of drag compared to Earth (Mars’ atmosphere is thin, about 1% density compared to Earth), communication delay (7 mins delay on Mars arrival, AKA 7 mins of terror), plus the extreme Mars environment. I'm confident in SpaceX’s ability to get this heat shield to work, as it's not an impossible problem, and SpaceX is known for making turning impossible, into late.

SpaceX testing their heat shield technologies in simulated Martian environments, image from SpaceX

The next big milestone for Starship is catch and reuse. Catching the ship will pose several challenges, but if anyone can pull it off, it's SpaceX. In the presentation we saw the first real ship catch animation, and my god, it looks INSANE!! (link at the bottom of the article). The ship will aim for behind the tower during the belly flop, then ignite its engines just under 1km above the pad. The flip manoeuvre will cause the ship to then come back over the tower and translate into the chopstick arms. Then after catching, it's all about refining the process. From getting the heat shield down to a tee to post-flight processing. This, as previously stated, will take years to hone in and perfect in order to truly achieve rapid reusability.

As of right now, Starship's upper stage stands at around 52.1m tall; this allows for a propellant capacity of 1500t. Next-gen ships won't be too much taller or taller at all, as the presentation slide about the ship height seems a bit off. So for now, the height is kind of a guessing game. Future ships after the next-gen ship will have a 20% increased propellant load, taking the total capacity to around 1800t. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll remember how we talked about the ship engine count going up. That won't happen with the next-gen ship; however, future iterations and designs will feature an extra 3 vacuum-optimised Raptor engines. All of these upgrades and reductions will allow for the chased dream of 200t to orbit with full rapid reusability.

One of the many key concepts for Starship to make dreams a reality is orbital refuelling. Without this, starships won't have the required propellant to get out of Earth's orbit. This procedure involves a starship tanker spacecraft docking to another starship carrying payload, refilling it, and undocking and returning to the launch site. This manoeuvre requires many technologies to be proven and constructed on a starship scale. These technologies include docking procedures, fuel transfer interfaces, fluid management and thermal management. All of these and more are required to complete the complex and precise task of refuelling in orbit. Propellant temperatures must be kept at cryogenic levels to avoid boiloff; tank pressures must be monitored carefully to allow prop to flow correctly. All of this has to be demonstrated within the next 18 months if SpaceX wants to hit that 2026 window.

During the speech, we had a short animation showing how the two spacecraft will complete the docking manoeuvre, and there are a few details to pick out. On the relative image, we can see that the docking ports aren't the traditional ones you see on the ISS, for example. There are 4 rod-like connectors/lines that connect to the ship during docking. It kind of looks NSFW (18+), as Elon put it; now I can't unsee it. 2 of the connectors are located towards the top end of the CH4 tank, potentially just above it? And the other 2 connectors are located beneath the LOX tank; we can tell it's beneath based off the stringers at the bottom of the tank. Due to the location of these, I’d assume the 2 forward connectors are for transferring CH₄ from one ship to the other, and the 2 aft connectors are for transferring LOX from one ship to the other. SpaceX are planning NET 2026 to demonstrate orbital refuelling.

V3 Starship Super Heavy has the potential, and I believe it will be the Starship iteration to achieve our dreams.

V3 Raptor

Raptor 3… the engine that powers said dreams. The engine that is alien-like, the engine that will take humans to Mars. It’s a marvel of engineering, a true masterpiece.

SpaceX’s Raptor 3 engine firing at McGregor Testing Facility in Texas, image from SpaceX

Just to get a sense of how insane the simplicity of R3 is, here’s a photo of R3 sea-level (right) and Vacuum (left) in front of a sea of Raptor 2 engines, image from SpaceX

Raptor 3 (R3) will be used on V3 Starship and will be the first engine to land a Starship on Mars. R3 is in the development phase right now, actively being tested to its limits at SpaceX’s McGregor engine testing facility in Texas. Up until now, SpaceX has conducted over 300 test firings of this engine, accumulating over 16,000 seconds, or 266 minutes, of running time. R3 is easily the sleekest-looking engine ever, considering how insanely complicated this engine is. Operating on a full flow staged combustion cycle (FFSC), Raptor is as complicated and intricate as you can get. So the fact they have eliminated more or less all external plumbing to have it run internal is outstanding. As per the presentation, “All secondary fluid circuits and electronics are contained within the structure itself.” This allows for the removal of the engine shielding on Starship and Super Heavy, allowing for greater performance.

United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno has publicly outed SpaceX, saying in a post on X, “They have done an excellent job. So, there is no need to exaggerate this by showing a partially assembled engine without controllers, fluid management, or TVC systems.” This then prompted an absolute slam dunk of a reply from SpaceX President and COO, Gwynne Shotwell.

Raptor 3, as we’ve said many times, is one giant leap for rocket propulsion technology. But, how much better is its performance stats compared to Raptors previous versions?

A few notes and takeaways from this table are just how much of a reduction in mass R3 allows. Obviously due to the lack of heat shield, it frees up an extra 1t (roughly) per engine. Super Heavy and Starship have a combined 39 engines, which saves around 40t of weight, which is nuts! A cool thing to point out is how R2 sacrificed some efficiency to generate more thrust compared to R1. But R3 just brings that efficiency back whilst massively increasing thrust. Writing this, I'm genuinely at a loss for words at how beautiful this engine is. You can see in the image of the 3 versions just how much SpaceX has mastered the engine with each iteration. Humongous props to the Raptor team; they have seriously blown it out of the water with Raptor 3. However, with all the positivity around this state-of-the-art engine, there are some downsides. Without shielding, an R3 RUD (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly, SpaceX’s way of saying it failed with a boom) would likely take out the other engines on the vehicle. This happened on flight 8 of Starship WITH engine shielding. An “energetic event” knocked out 4/6 engines on the Starship upper stage prior to SECO, causing the loss of Ship 34. So, R3 would have to be more or less perfect. Elon himself has even said, “This engine may take a few kicks at the can.” So don’t expect a 100% flight success rate with this engine from the outset. This is about all of the information we have on Raptor 3 as of right now.

So with that, lets move on to our next topic… Mar- , SIKE! (Dan Huot reference, iykyk), we got to talk about how these beasts get built first!

Starfactory and Giga Bay

Starfactory is SpaceX’s giant factory and office building where Starships are designed and built. In the long term, the 1 million square foot factory will allow for upwards of 1000 starships to be produced every year. But for now, it has the capability to produce a Starship every other week, or 26 per year. Although, due to the iterative and rapid testing nature of the Starship program, this capability hasn’t been fully utilised as of yet. The neat thing about Starfactory is that it brings all phases of production (minus vehicle stacking that takes place in the bays) under one roof, meaning the team that worked on the previous stage of the vehicle is more or less right beside you. This streamlines production massively and allows for such a production cadence they intend to have. Eventually, SpaceX will build as many ships for Mars as Boeing does commercial aircraft. As impressive as Starfactory is, it can only do so much. SpaceX needs another building in order to stack these incredibly tall vehicles. That’s where the Giga Bay comes in. SpaceX are going to be build this state of the art rocket integration building in order to meet their expected production goals. Giga Bay is going to be 380 ft tall with an interior space of 46.5 million cubic feet, including 815,000 square feet of work space. This massive work space allows SpaceX to sack around 24 ships/boosters at the same time! Once this comes online, Starship production will go through the roof! It will look amazing once finished. It will be connected to Starfactory so Giga Bay becomes part of the production line. Then the vehicles get stacked and leave the building through doorways straight onto Highway 4. The streamlined production will be insane to witness!

Starbase’s Giga Bay render, from SpaceX

Mars Timelines

Now we’ve gotten how SpaceX will construct their Martian fleet of Starship out the way, lets discuss when this will happen.

SpaceX has confirmed their targeted launch date for the first Starship launch to Mars will be during the late 2026 Mars transfer window. However, this window seems to be fading away day by day due to the rocky 2025 for Starship. With only 3 flights so far this year, 2 (flights 7 & 8) being complete failures and 1 (flight 9) being a partial failure, SpaceX has a lot to figure out if they want to make that 2026 window. As I've already talked about, orbital refuelling NEEDS to be reliable and doable. But, before that, ship reuse needs to be reliable and rather fast (a couple of weeks turnaround MAX). Both of these are needed for Mars ships. In addition to those two, SpaceX also needs to iron out the kinks that may come with the next-gen Starship and develop all the required technology to keep a ship powered for the 6-month journey to the red planet. Power generation, no boiloff, and communications are just some of the hurdles they need to jump over to reach Mars. There’s no doubt SpaceX are already working on these; whether they can perfectly apply them to actual real-world situations is another story. With SpaceX’s Artemis contract to develop a Lunar Starship, I'm sure SpaceX already has power production figured out. However, the voyage to Mars is 1000x longer than to the moon, so some technologies will need to be upgraded accordingly. As of right now, Elon has given a 50/50 chance of SpaceX actually hitting this launch window, which, in my opinion, are pretty realistic odds.

In this graphic we can see how SpaceX intends to increase payload to Mars as Starship production increases. A Mars transfer window is open every 26 months, which gives SpaceX a lot of time to fix issues that may have occurred on the previous window and time to produce loads of Starships, etc. The first Starships to Mars will be carrying Tesla Optimus robots. These highly intelligent robots currently exist, and there are many videos on X of these robots doing some pretty cool s***. However, some refining will be needed to get these Mars ready. On arrival, these bots will start to begin to pave the way for future human missions (NET 2028 IF first landings are perfect, however will most likely be the 2030 window.)

As you can see in the goals for 2026, SpaceX will send “minimum viable ships to maximise learning”. These ships will be the bare minimum, with solar panels and likely no interior, just for SpaceX to demonstrate their landing capabilities. Unlike Starship development we see today, SpaceX will have to nail it ASAP, as they only have opportunities to do landings every 26 months. If all the first window launches fail, then human missions are delayed by 26 months every time there's a failure. Essentially, their first attempt is just a proving ground.

Then we move on to their second window (provided the first window goes well). SpaceX intends to begin planning and building on the surface for more Starship landings, with one of the key goals being to “prep landing sites”. The first landings will be landing straight onto rough terrain, kicking up loads of Martian surface features which can cause damage. This isn't nominal; SpaceX will develop landing pads for these ships in order to allow potential Mars returns. But before they develop these pads, they need to prove and confirm the viability of the landing area for future colonisation. This will include “landing initial infrastructure” and “confirming resource availability”, both incredibly important steps for human missions.

Now we move onto the 2030s, which, in my opinion, is the decade that turns the tides of human past, present and future. This is when I think the first manned missions will actually take place and where Mars starts to turn into our second home. Roads and pads, habitats and production – everything will start to come together once the humans arrive and greet the Optimus bots. Power production is the key goal to achieve straight away to allow for further rapid expansion. Power production enables stuff like propellant production for Mars returns and advanced water and resource mining; power is needed. Elon has a huge fixation on solar panels for power, and these are seen in renders from his speech. So I expect a huge area for a huge solar panel farm to be prepped for humans to install and allow mass power generation. We got how we are getting there and when we can get there; now it's time to discuss why and how we'll live there.

The Mars City

There are many ways to live on Mars: lava tubes, protected surface habitats, or just digging underground yourself. Based on renders, SpaceX seems to have gone with the latter. With the help of Elon Musk's other company, The Boring Company, SpaceX can dig tunnels on the Martian grounds and install habitation modules into them. In SpaceX’s render, we can see an underground town handmade by machines and humans. No matter what route they go down, though, they must take into consideration many key factors in order for humans to live rather than survive. Radiation, space per person, production facilities, etc., all have to be taken into account, the big one being radiation. Water and Martian regolith can be used in the walls of habitats to absorb radiation to protect us. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a lot on what a city will look like besides the renders, so that’s kind of all we got.

SpaceX render of a Martian city depicting what will be needed for a self-sustaining mars city, image from Spacex

SpaceX will also need to develop the logistics to support many hundreds of landings in the future. This requires being able to offload Starships, move them, refuel (or scrap them for parts), then relaunch them. We can see in this render that SpaceX will utilise the Mars version of the SPMTs used down at Starbase to transport ships around Mars.

“Where will we live, and how will we communicate?” Is a good question with a good answer. SpaceX has named the Arcadia Regions on Mars as one of their primary landing sites for the beginning of their Martian city. Why here, though? The Arcadia region has much near-surface water ice discovered by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). As we all know, water is the key to ALL life, so a good amount is needed for a long-term human presence. The Arcadia region is also flat and easy to build on compared to other regions on Mars, allowing for easier first landings on Mars where landing pads haven't been developed. Another benefit to pair with the flat terrain is how low the elevation is compared to other Martian locations; this creates a slightly thicker atmosphere, allowing for a slower descent for Starship and slightly greater protection from radiation. This area also receives a good amount of solar energy for power production, which we’ve discussed as being key to Martian colonisation. Arcadia is also the name of Elon Musk's daughter, which is super cool!

Starlink will enable communications and transmissions from Mars orbit and the Martian surface. A unique and new iteration of the Starlink satellite (which we will call MarsLink) is confirmed to be sent to Mars. Starlink uses laser technology to talk and send data between Earth and other satellites. We are a while away from these as of right now, but V3 Starlink will be launching in “6-9 months, according to Elon on X. These satellites, once deployed, are the size of a Boeing 737!!

Things I Wish We Saw During The Speech

Although we got an incredibly inspiring presentation from Elon, there were some missing things that we all would’ve loved more information on. Here is my list:

- Mars ISRU development. Are SpaceX working on this themselves? Have they done any production or testing? This is an important thing to have on Mars; I would’ve liked some information on it, but we got nothing!

- Mars surface EVA suits. Once again, are these being developed? Will they be derived from the EVA suits from Polaris Dawn?

- Is Optimus ready for these complex tasks and harsh environments it will face? If not, what will it take to get them ready for Mars?

- Crew training. What will it take to become a Martian? Has any training begun?

- A more detailed journey to Mars. How many people per trip? Have any interior mock-ups been built yet? Have the ship's solar panels been designed or tested yet?

- How big will the Mars Starlink constellation be? Has development begun on these satellites?

- Timeline for a first crewed Starship test flight (although SpaceX probably don’t even know yet)

Final thoughts

Just wow! Incredibly inspiring and moving presentation from Elon. It's good to see him back at Starbase and prioritising SpaceX again. Do I think this is all possible? Absolutely! These minor setbacks we are witnessing right now will allow for much greater comebacks. We will get to Mars one day! It's in our DNA to explore, and oh boy, we will explore. And there's no better journey for exploration than the ‘greatest adventure in human history’!

Go SpaceX, Go Starship, To Mars, To becoming a Martian. Cheers.

Logan Smith
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