ITS launch vehicle

The ITS launch vehicle, short for Interplanetary Transport System, was a 2016 to 2017 SpaceX design for a very large, fully reusable launch vehicle 12 metres in diameter and about 122 metres tall. Elon Musk unveiled it on 27 September 2016 at the 67th International Astronautical Congress, and it grew out of the earlier Mars Colonial Transporter concept. The stack was to be a booster with 42 Raptor engines burning liquid methane and liquid oxygen, topped by either an interplanetary spaceship or a propellant tanker, with a stated capacity of 300 tonnes to low Earth orbit when reusable and 550 tonnes when expended. No launch vehicle hardware was ever built, and in 2017 SpaceX dropped the design for a smaller 9 metre vehicle first called the BFR, which became Starship and Super Heavy.