This image if of a test fire of 3 of the 30 Raptor engines that will carry the Space X SuperHeavy into orbit. This is just the booster. That’s the part that carries the Starship part to orbit and then returns and lands on Earth to be reused. The combination of these two craft is will take the next humans to the moon.
What this picture doesn’t give you is an idea of just how tall this thing is. I could tell you that the booster shown is 130 meters tall, but I’d lose most of us Americans right away. If I said, 230ft, you’d start getting it. But in this post I wanted to give some perspective on that height.
I live in Abilene, Texas, a small city in West Texas. These are the four tallest buildings in town.
| # | BUILDING | FLOORS | HEIGHT |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Enterprise Tower | 20 | 285 ft |
| 2 | Hotel Wooten | 18 | 200 ft |
| 3 | First Financial Center | 10 | 145 ft |
| 4 | The Windsor | 10 | 139 ft |
What this means is that if the Super Heavy Booster were sitting in Downtown Abilene, it would be the second tallest building.
If you’ve been following SpaceX’s recent test launches in south Texas, you may have seen this being shot up to the edge of space and landed again:
This is Starship. It’s what will carry people, and it is no small thing. It is 50 meter, or 160ft all by itself. Which means all by itself, it would be the 3rd tallest building in Abilene. It is taller than the First Financial Building and the Winsor downtown.
And while it can take itself to orbit and back, that won’t get it to the moon. So the Super Heavy Booster was created to carry it. Starship will be stacked onto the top of the Super Heavy giving a total height of 130 meters or 390 ft. Making it much taller than the Enterprise Building.
According to Google, a building story is about 14ft on average. Which makes Starship 11 stories. Super Heavy 16 stories, and together almost 30 stories tall.
Just wanted to give some perspective to my Abilene friends.
| # | Structure | Height (ft) | Floors |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Super Heavy & Starship | 390 | 30 |
| 2 | Enterprise Building | 285 | 20 |
| 3 | Falcon 9 with Fairing | 229.6 | |
| 4 | Hotel Wooten | 200 | 18 |
| 5 | Starship | 160 | 11 |
| 6 | First Financial Center | 145 | 10 |
| 7 | The Windsor | 139 | 10 |