Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
When you do something very good, people start to notice it. And the more you do it better than others, the more customers you attract. This is also true in the space industry. SpaceX was just a small startup two decades ago, and today they are the largest and most successful company in the rocket-launch business. Even NASA uses their rockets for crew and cargo missions. And recently, they’ve started getting attention from the biggest customer anyone in aerospace could ever get: the United States government. The U.S. Space Force just ordered SpaceX to do something they genuinely weren’t expecting. We’ll talk about every detail, but before we delve any deeper, please make sure to subscribe to our channel for more updates.
The reason the U.S. military is paying so much attention is simple. Starship is not a normal rocket. Fully stacked, it stands about 121 meters tall, making it taller than the Saturn 5. And when it lifts off, it produces around 16.7 million pounds of thrust, which is nearly twice as powerful as Saturn 5 and far more powerful than NASA’s new SLS rocket. Nothing currently flying or even close to flying matches Starship’s strength. Its payload capacity is also on a completely different level. A Falcon 9 can carry about 22 tons to low Earth orbit. The biggest rockets the United States used in the past, like the Delta 4 Heavy, could lift around 28 tons. Even SLS, which is extremely expensive to fly, lifts around 95 tons. But Starship is aiming for 100 to 150 tons without refueling, and even more once the orbital refueling system is ready. For the military, this means a single launch can do the work of several smaller rockets combined.
When you do something very good, people start to notice it. And the more you do it better than others, the more customers you attract. This is also true in the space industry. SpaceX was just a small startup two decades ago, and today they are the largest and most successful company in the rocket-launch business. Even NASA uses their rockets for crew and cargo missions. And recently, they’ve started getting attention from the biggest customer anyone in aerospace could ever get: the United States government. The U.S. Space Force just ordered SpaceX to do something they genuinely weren’t expecting. We’ll talk about every detail, but before we delve any deeper, please make sure to subscribe to our channel for more updates.
The reason the U.S. military is paying so much attention is simple. Starship is not a normal rocket. Fully stacked, it stands about 121 meters tall, making it taller than the Saturn 5. And when it lifts off, it produces around 16.7 million pounds of thrust, which is nearly twice as powerful as Saturn 5 and far more powerful than NASA’s new SLS rocket. Nothing currently flying or even close to flying matches Starship’s strength. Its payload capacity is also on a completely different level. A Falcon 9 can carry about 22 tons to low Earth orbit. The biggest rockets the United States used in the past, like the Delta 4 Heavy, could lift around 28 tons. Even SLS, which is extremely expensive to fly, lifts around 95 tons. But Starship is aiming for 100 to 150 tons without refueling, and even more once the orbital refueling system is ready. For the military, this means a single launch can do the work of several smaller rockets combined.
