SpaceX Starship V3 will be 30 meters taller with a proposed height of 150 meters. SpaceX should upgrade to Starship version 3 by November, 2025 from the recently flow version 2. It will be about 7500 tons.
It is projected that Starship V3 could have a payload capacity of over 200 tons to low Earth orbit (LEO) when fully reusable, and potentially more if expendable.
Starship V3 is expected to have a thrust of over 10,000 tonnes force at launch, which would make it the most powerful rockets ever developed, exceeding even many of the theoretical Nova rocket variants.
In 2026, Starship V3 demonstrate capabilities like in-orbit refueling and possibly serve as a tanker for missions to destinations requiring more extensive refueling, such as the Moon or Mars.
Starlink Version 3 Should Start Deployment from Starship in a few Months
Each Version 3 Starlink satellite will weigh about 1900 kg. Version 2 Mini’s weigh 575 kg.
Dimensions: When deployed, V3 satellites will have a wingspan of about 60 meters, unfolded from a base of 7-8 meters, allowing for larger antennas and solar panels.
Uplink: Each V3 satellite is expected to have an uplink capacity of 160 Gbps.
Downlink: The downlink capacity for each satellite is planned to be 1 Terabit per second..
Total Capacity per Launch: Each Starship launch carrying V3 satellites is anticipated to add 60 Tbps of capacity to the Starlink network, which is more than 20 times the capacity added by a V2 Mini launch on Falcon 9.
SpaceX could have 44 launches of Starship in 2026. If 40 have Starlink launches this will add 2400 Tbps to the roughly 800 Tbps currently in orbit. Another 100 Falcon 9 Starlink launches would add 300 Tbps for a total of about 3500 Tbps.
In 2027, the version 4 SpaceX Starship could launch over 102 version 3 starlink satellites. This would be 120 Tbps of downlink capacity.
The version 3 Starlink will have nearly 4 Tbps of combined RF and laser backhaul capacity, which is crucial for data transmission between satellites.
Computing, Modems, Beamforming, and Switching: V3 satellites will use SpaceX’s next-generation technology in these areas for superior performance and efficiency.
Latency: The satellites aim for a latency of about 5 milliseconds, made possible by being positioned at a lower orbit of 350 km.
SpaceX filed a request late in 2024 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deploy up to 29,988 satellites. This request should be approved soon.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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As long as I have watched the Starship launches, I have wondered about (and questioned) the payload numbers. They display the fuel level during the launch and one can clearly see the tanks running out before orbit even when Starship is empty. It sure looks like they overestimated the payload capacity back in the days. Now that everything is beefed up to actually work, the energy budget doesn’t add up and they have to go bigger to have a useful payload. Speculation but it sort of looks like that.
I’ve thought the same thing.
Can you relate your calculation?