Super Heavy Block 1 (V1)

Block 1 — Version 1 or V1 in SpaceX's own nomenclature — is the first Super Heavy configuration that actually lifted off. It covers the vehicles numbered Booster 7 through Booster 13 and flew six times between 20 April 2023 and 19 November 2024. In that year and a half the booster went from being destroyed before separating from the ship to returning to the launch mount and hanging from the tower arms.

Booster 7 was placed on the orbital launch mount on 31 March 2022 and suffered, during its test campaign, almost everything it could suffer: two cryogenic proof tests in April ruptured the downcomer, and on 11 July a detonation underneath the engines during an attempted thirty-three-engine spin prime forced much of the work to be redone. It returned to the mount on 4 August with only the twenty outer engines, static fired a single engine on 9 August and repeated the test two days later. With the thirteen inner engines installed it ran a series of tests through August and September, fired fourteen engines on 14 November and eleven on 29 November in an autogenous pressurisation test. After a wet dress rehearsal in January 2023 and an attempted thirty-three-engine static fire on 9 February, it lifted off on 20 April 2023 on the first integrated flight test. A fire in the aft section severed the connections between the engines and the flight computers, the vehicle lost attitude control and the flight termination system destroyed it before stage separation.

Booster 8 finished stacking on 8 July 2022 and reached the launch site on 19 September, but was never tested there: it was scrapped in January 2023 in favour of Booster 9, and several of its parts — its hydraulic power units and engine shielding among them — ended up fitted to B7. Booster 9 introduced the version's deepest change: electric thrust vector control, replacing the hydraulic power units used up to B8. On 6 August 2023 it fired twenty-nine engines for 2.7 seconds instead of the planned thirty-three for five, but on 25 August it achieved a full static fire of all thirty-three, with two shutting down early. It lifted off on 18 November 2023 at 7:02 in the morning, central time, with all thirty-three engines lit, and was destroyed after several engine failures during the boostback burn, already separated from the ship.

Booster 10, stacked in March 2023, ran its thirty-three-engine static fire on 29 December and flew on 14 March 2024, completing the ascent burn without a single engine failure; six engines failed during the boostback burn and only three started for the landing burn, two of which shut down shortly afterwards. Booster 11 flew on 6 June 2024 with one engine failing shortly after liftoff, a flawless boostback burn and a second failure during the landing burn; it was destroyed after tipping over on the water, although in October SpaceX vice-president Bill Gerstenmaier claimed it had come down within half a centimetre of its target.

Booster 12 began assembly in June 2023 and ran its thirty-three-engine static fire on 15 July 2024. It lifted off on 13 October 2024 and completed the ascent, boostback and landing burns with no engine failures before being caught by the tower's chopsticks and lowered onto the launch mount: the first capture of an orbital-class booster in history. Elon Musk described the damage as easily addressed, including warping of the outer engine nozzles. The booster was retired to the rocket garden on 28 October without flying again.

Booster 13 and subsequent vehicles introduced upgraded liquid oxygen vents, a new raceway design and reinforced chines. It flew on 19 November 2024, completing the ascent, boostback and landing burns, but the catch attempt was called off because of an issue with the launch tower and the booster was diverted to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico; its aft section was recovered in late July 2025. With it the first flight version of Super Heavy came to an end.