From Falcon 1 to Starship: How this rocket fits into SpaceX’s grand plans

SpaceX's Falcon 1 at the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Test Site on Omelek Island, in November 2005. Tom Rogers/Reuters

SpaceX has a lot of rockets and a few programs that start with "Star." To avoid confusion, here's a quick recap of some of the things this company has built.

Let's start with the rockets:

• Falcon 1: This was SpaceX's very first rocket, which first reached orbit in 2008. It was retired just a year later, as the company turned its focus to larger rockets.
• Falcon 9: This is SpaceX's workhorse rocket. It flies the vast majority of the company's missions — taking satellites and NASA astronauts to orbit. So far in 2023 alone, the Falcon 9 has launched more than 70 spaceflights.
• Falcon Heavy: This is a scaled-up version of Falcon 9 that SpaceX uses on missions that require a bit more power, such as lofting heavy satellites to distant orbits. The rocket has flown three times so far this year.
• Starship: Musk has called Starship the "holy grail" rocket, and it is far more powerful than anything SpaceX has built before. He envisions it one day carrying humans to Mars for the first time.
• In recent remarks, Musk said Starship makes the Falcon 1 look like "a high school project."

And here are some other notable "Star" references in the commercial space world:

• Starlink: This is SpaceX's space-based internet project that uses thousands of satellites to beam connectivity across the globe.
• Starbase: The name SpaceX uses to refer to its facilities in South Texas
• Starliner: This is not a SpaceX project at all. It's an astronaut spacecraft that Boeing is developing.