SpaceX Starship has use orbital spaceflight
History
Starting with a 2012 announcement of plans to develop a rocket with substantially greater capabilities than SpaceX's existing Falcon 9—underpinned by the ambition to enable human exploration and settlement of Mars—the company created a succession of preliminary designs for such a vehicle, under various names (Mars Colonial Transporter, Interplanetary Transport System, BFR) leading up to a 2019 adoption of a stainless-steel body design, which is also when the name changed to the current Starship. SpaceX has since been applying the iterative design methodology, using intensive tests on a series of rocket prototypes. The first prototype, Starhopper, performed several static fires and low-altitude flights. Seven of Starship's upper-stage prototypes were flight tested between August 2020 and May 2021. The last of the seven, a full-size Starship SN15, successfully landed after reaching an altitude of 10 kilometers (6.2 mi). A full-scale orbital test flight of the rocket took place on April 20, 2023.