The view underneath SpaceX's Starship shows its many rocket engines. (Image credit: Elon Musk via X.)
Since its founding in 2002, SpaceX has worked to revolutionize the spaceflight industry, mainly through developing reusable rockets that can land and fly again. This includes the company's Falcon 9 rocket, which has become the workhorse of global launches, ferrying cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station under contracts with NASA, among many other tasks.
The photo shows the 33 Raptor engines of Super Heavy, Starship's first stage, arranged in a dense circular pattern. Musk added in a separate post: "33 engines, each more than twice the power of all 4 engines on a 747."
This photograph was taken at SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas, near Boca Chica, where the Starship system is built and tested.
Packing 33 engines into a single stage presents some intense engineering challenges. Each Raptor engine must fire in perfect synchronization, maintaining stability during launch while withstanding extreme forces and vibrations.
As if this weren't ambitious enough, Musk added the following in a thread on his original post: "Starship V4 will have 42 engines when 3 more Raptors are added to a significantly longer ship. That will fly in 2027." With more engines providing additional thrust, systems like Starship can carry heavier payloads, making deep-space travel more achievable.