SpaceX's Starship Version 3 Super Heavy Explained - Very Different Than Anything Before!

Video from the channel What about it!? about Super Heavy, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 22:47. Language: English. Video type: News.

The episode, from October 2025, explains how Booster 18, the first Super Heavy booster of version 3 (Block 3), is being built at Starbase, whose stacking had already begun. According to the host, the version 2 boosters, whose cycle ended with flight 11, limited the ship's payload to around 100 tonnes, and SpaceX needs a larger vehicle. The channel expected pad testing in early December and a launch around mid-January.

The sequence began with Test Tank 17, assembled in Mega Bay 1 and moved to the Massey's test site. On May 19 the common dome separating the oxygen and methane tanks came out, followed by the oxygen tank sections, identified with a code: letter (A aft, F forward, M middle), stacking order and number of rings. On July 7 the transfer tube appeared, as large as a Falcon 9 booster. Afterward came a tank with cones on both ends that the channel attributes to additional methane, because the height of Mega Bay 1 prevents lengthening the tank. In September the aft section was added, with the autogenous pressurization lines for oxygen and methane; the function of the rest of the piping is the channel's conjecture. The methane tank consists of the integrated hot-staging separation ring and two more sections. The grid fins stay inside the tank in a sealed housing and the internal stringers go from 76 to 96.

Version 3 changes the booster's architecture: it integrates the hot-staging separation ring into the upper dome and protects the fin mechanisms from contact with cryogenic liquids without rotating seals. The episode also covers the move of the Orion capsule "Integrity" to the Kennedy assembly building for Artemis II, with Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen and a launch no earlier than February 5, 2026. It also covers Vast's Haven-1 station, over 14 tonnes, and PLD Space's Miura 5, 35.7 m and 1,080 kg to low orbit, with a maiden flight planned for 2026 from French Guiana.