A Guide to SpaceX's Starship/Brief History

To understand what is Starship, we must look at its history. Starship has many names in the past, most notably Falcon XX, Mars Colonial Transporter, Big Falcon (Fucking) Rocket and Interplanetary Transport System. All of these names are referring to the some aspects of Starship. This is not meant to be a complete history, as the topic can have its own book by its right.

Falcon XX

The Falcon XX is not officially a predecessor of Starship, nevertheless, Falcon XX shared a lot of similarity. Like with many prototypes, it has never been produced, but rather to iron out idea of what SpaceX thinks a super-heavy lift launch vehicle should be. The Falcon XX would be 100 meter high, 10 meter wide and able to lift 140 metric tons. It has six Merlin 2 engines, a bigger and more powerful version of the Merlin engine, which produce about 45,000 kilonewtons of force. For comparison, the Saturn V rocket can only thrust about 35,000 kilonewtons. The Merlin 2 is probably kerosene and liquid oxygen fed like the Falcon 9. The engine's flow rate is about 2750 kg/s, with a chamber pressure of about 140 bar. The Merlin 2 engine would have about 321 seconds of specfic impulse.