SpaceX's New Starship Gen 5 powers 33% Destroy V3... Even NASA's Scientists Shocked!
SpaceX's New Starship Gen 5 powers 33% Destroy V3... Even NASA's Scientists Shocked!
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#alphatech
#techalpha
#spacex
#elonmusk
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SpaceX's New Starship Gen 5 powers 33% Destroy V3... Even NASA's Scientists Shocked!
The hardest thing is beating your own record. But for SpaceX and Elon Musk, that's just business as usual — they build milestones only to shatter them.
The prime example is Starship — the largest rocket ever built. Each new version comes out stronger than the last. Right now, SpaceX is about to launch Starship V3, while V4 is already waiting in the wings to break that record. And it doesn't stop there — Starship V5 is already in the works, engineered to dominate the very thing that dominates.
You heard that right, Starship V5 is real, and Elon Musk himself has confirmed it.
So just how powerful will V5 be?
And what are the most exciting things we can look forward to when it finally arrives?
SpaceX's New Starship Gen 5 powers 33% Destroy V3... Even NASA's Scientists Shocked!
Let’s find out on today’s episode of Alpha Tech:
Rocket power has just been pushed to a new level—and this shift isn’t coming from an entirely new design, but from the next step in an ongoing evolution.
Recently, Elon Musk stated that the next iteration of Starship—Version 4—is targeting an enormous 10,000 metric tons of thrust at liftoff. In his words, that’s around 22 million pounds of force, roughly three times the power of the Saturn V that once carried astronauts to the Moon. “Starship V4 aims to achieve 10k metric tons of thrust at liftoff or ~22M pounds of force, which is ~3 times the power of the Saturn V Moon rocket.”
On paper, that sounds like a natural upgrade. But when you look more closely, this level of performance starts to feel less like a simple Version 4 improvement—and more like something that belongs to a future Version 5.
So why does that distinction matter?
To answer that, we need to break down the numbers behind Starship’s current propulsion system.
SpaceX's New Starship Gen 5 powers 33% Destroy V3... Even NASA's Scientists Shocked!
Right now, Starship Version 3 is equipped with Raptor engines that can theoretically produce around 280 tons of thrust each. In practice, however, they are often operated closer to 250 tons to maintain stability and reliability during flight.
That gap is important.
Because increasing engine thrust by more than 20 tons per engine isn’t a minor tweak—it’s a significant leap in performance. It suggests that SpaceX is moving toward a new generation of engines, often referred to as Raptor 4. In fact, internal targets have already hinted at vacuum-optimized Raptor engines exceeding 300 tons of thrust, with some estimates reaching around 306 tons.
But here’s where things get more nuanced. If each Raptor 4 engine produces about 300 tons of thrust, then a booster with 33 engines would theoretically generate around 9,900 tons of total thrust. That’s very close to the 10,000-ton target—but still just under it.
And more importantly, that number represents peak performance. In real-world operations, rockets rarely run continuously at their absolute maximum limits. Engineers typically leave performance margins to ensure stability, longevity, and safety. So even if 9,900 tons is achievable on paper, sustaining that level reliably is a different challenge.
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