How tall is the Falcon 9?

The 70 m are split between the first stage, about 41 m, the second stage, about 13 m, and the payload fairing, 13.1 m long and 5.2 m in diameter. The 3.7 m diameter of the main body is no accident: it allows the stages to be transported by road from the factory in Hawthorne, California, to the launch sites in Florida and Vandenberg, a constraint that shaped the rocket's design from the start. The fairing is wider than the rocket because satellites are sized by their volume, not by the structure that carries them.

At 549 t at liftoff, the Falcon 9 sits in the medium-lift category. Its nine Merlin 1D engines produce about 7,600 kN (1.7 million lbf) of thrust at sea level. The maximum payload of 22,800 kg to low Earth orbit corresponds to a flight without recovering the first stage; on typical missions, where the booster lands on a droneship, the payload is lower, on the order of 17 t depending on the profile. To geostationary transfer orbit it carries up to 8,300 kg in expendable mode and about 5,500 kg with recovery.

The Falcon 9 has grown with each version: the original from 2010 stood 54.9 m tall; the 1.1 version from 2013 lengthened the tanks and reached 68.4 m; the Full Thrust version from 2015 set the current 70 m. Since the Block 5 in 2018 the dimensions have not changed, which lets the same fleet of boosters, fairings and droneships serve every mission, from Starlink to crewed flights for NASA.