Starship offers larger physical scale and a fully reusable design. Long March 10 offers a dedicated three-core expendable architecture built specifically to send Chinese astronauts to the lunar surface. Both rockets anchor their nations’ respective crewed lunar programs, but they reflect fundamentally different engineering strategies.
SpaceX builds Starship out of stainless steel and relies on launch-tower mechanical arms to catch both stages for rapid reuse. The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) designed Long March 10 using three identical kerosene and liquid-oxygen stages that fly expendable missions to trans-lunar injection.
Neither super-heavy rocket has flown an operational mission with a payload to orbit. As both nations advance their flight tests, the competition between Starship and Long March 10 sets the operational pace for lunar exploration through 2030.
The Comparison at a Glance
| Measure | Starship | Long March 10 |
|---|---|---|
| Builder | SpaceX | China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) |
| Height | About 120 meters | About 92.5 meters |
| Propellant | Methane and liquid oxygen (both stages) | Kerosene and liquid oxygen (stages 1 and 2), liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen (stage 3) |
| Reusability design | Fully reusable (booster and upper stage caught by tower arms) | Expendable three-core baseline (booster recovery tested separately on 10B variant) |
| Payload to low Earth orbit | Not yet published or demonstrated on operational flight | 70,000 kg |
| Payload to trans-lunar injection | Unconfirmed for operational lunar missions | 27,000 kg |
| Primary launch site | Starbase (Boca Chica, Texas) | Wenchang Space Launch Site (Hainan island) |
| Moon mission role | Human Landing System for NASA Artemis (lunar orbit to surface) | Direct launch of Mengzhou crew ship and Lanyue lander (two launches per mission) |
| Flight status | 13 integrated test flights completed | Low-altitude test flight completed (February 2026) |
Starship vs. Long March 10 on Architecture and Materials
SpaceX built Starship around complete vehicle reusability. The system consists of two stages: the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage, often referred to simply as Ship. Both stages use stainless steel instead of carbon fiber or aerospace-grade aluminum alloys. Stainless steel delivers high resistance to cryogenic temperatures inside the propellant tanks. It also withstands the intense heating of atmospheric reentry, which reduces the amount of protective thermal shielding required on the upper stage.
Starship uses liquid methane and liquid oxygen across both stages. The Super Heavy booster carries about 33 Raptor engines, while the upper stage carries six Raptor engines divided between sea-level and vacuum-optimized configurations. SpaceX designed the entire system to return to the launch site. Super Heavy does not use landing legs. Instead, mechanical catch arms on the launch tower, known as chopsticks, catch the descending booster as it hovers. The upper stage reenters the atmosphere belly-first behind a ceramic-tile heat shield, executes a flip maneuver with its engines, and approaches the tower for a catch or splashes down.
Long March 10 follows an expendable multi-core architecture for crewed lunar exploration. CALT built the rocket around three identical 5-meter-diameter cores grouped side by side. The two outer boosters are identical stage units rather than custom strap-on boosters. The vehicle burns kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen in its first two stages. Twenty-one YF-100K engines fire simultaneously at liftoff, with seven engines seated in each of the three cores. Combined liftoff thrust reaches roughly 26,000 kilonewtons.
The second stage of Long March 10 uses two YF-100M engines burning kerosene and liquid oxygen. The third stage uses three YF-75E engines burning high-efficiency liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The third stage provides the final push to propel payloads toward the Moon. The primary crewed version of Long March 10 flies as an expendable vehicle without landing legs, grid fins, or catch hardware. A separate single-core development vehicle called Long March 10B focuses on first-stage recovery, but the lunar moon rocket discards its stages after burning through its propellant.
Vehicle Scale and Payload Capacity
Starship is physically larger than Long March 10. Stacked together on the launch mount, Starship and its Super Heavy booster reach about 120 meters in height. That height makes Starship the tallest rocket ever launched. Long March 10 stands about 92.5 meters tall, with a liftoff mass of about 2,189 metric tons. The wider 9-meter diameter of Starship provides far more internal volume for propellant and cargo than the 5-meter cores of Long March 10.
Payload numbers show different levels of public verification. CALT published official payload ratings for the three-core Long March 10. The rocket is rated to place 70,000 kilograms into low Earth orbit and 27,000 kilograms into trans-lunar injection. These numbers reflect the performance needed to inject China’s next-generation spacecraft directly into a lunar trajectory.
SpaceX has not published a confirmed, operational payload figure for Starship. Company leadership has stated internal design targets in public presentations, but Starship has not yet delivered a customer payload to a verified orbit. Operational performance will depend on the final mass of the stainless-steel upper stage, engine efficiency, and the propellant reserves needed for atmospheric entry and tower catches. SpaceX provides updates on design targets on the official SpaceX Starship page. Readers can see how these dimensions compare with other heavy vehicles in our guide to the most powerful rockets compared.
SpaceX also stated an aspirational cost target between $100 and $200 per kilogram to orbit once Starship achieves complete, rapid reuse. That figure remains an unproven design goal rather than an active commercial price. CALT has not released a confirmed per-launch cost figure for Long March 10. As a state-funded national exploration system, Long March 10 prioritizes schedule reliability and lunar injection capacity rather than commercial price competition.
Flight Testing and Technical Maturity
Both vehicles remain in testing phases and have not completed operational orbital missions. SpaceX conducts flight tests from its Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas. As of early September 2026, SpaceX has completed 13 integrated flight tests of the Starship system. These flights deliberately followed controlled, partially suborbital trajectories. This trajectory design ensures that if the vehicle loses attitude control, it reenters over open ocean rather than over populated landmasses. Starship test flights have not entered sustained operational orbits.
Flight 13 demonstrated the upper stage’s highest precision to date. The ship completed an intact splashdown in the Indian Ocean after enduring peak atmospheric heating with its ceramic heat shield. SpaceX suffered a setback on the same flight when Super Heavy Booster 20 failed during its landing burn. Only 10 of its 13 relighting center engines ignited. The booster impacted the ocean at high speed instead of returning for recovery. SpaceX scheduled Flight 14 for no earlier than 15 September 2026 with Booster 21 and a new upper stage. Flight 14 was planned as the first attempt to catch the upper stage at the launch tower. SpaceX continues to investigate the Flight 13 booster landing failure, which may force Booster 21 to execute an ocean landing if engineers do not clear the issue before launch. Readers tracking this development can read our detailed breakdown in Starship explained.
The crewed three-core Long March 10 has not attempted an orbital launch. CALT completed ground-based tethered ignition tests before staging a low-altitude demonstration flight at the Wenchang Space Launch Site on 11 February 2026. That flight verified stage dynamics and engine ignition sequencing near the pad.
China advanced its rocket recovery testing through a separate vehicle variant. On 10 July 2026, the Long March 10B variant launched to orbit and recovered its first-stage booster at sea using a net-based catch platform, as reported by SpaceNews. The recovery made China the second country in history to recover an orbital-class rocket booster. That recovery technology was proven on the 10B test vehicle rather than the three-core lunar booster. CALT is also developing the Long March 10A, a single-core rocket rated for 14,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit to support space station crew rotations and commercial satellite launches. Flight schedules for the crewed program are published by the China Manned Space Agency. Further background is available in our analysis of Long March 10 explained.
Crewed Lunar Landing Architectures
The operational differences between Starship and Long March 10 become clearest when examining their mission architectures for landing astronauts on the Moon. NASA selected a specialized variant of Starship as the Human Landing System for its Artemis program. Under this architecture, Starship does not launch astronauts directly from Earth. NASA launches its crew aboard the Orion spacecraft using the Space Launch System, which we analyze in our comparison of Long March 10 vs. SLS.
The Starship Human Landing System launches uncrewed from Earth. It requires multiple propellant-depot launches in low Earth orbit to refill its cryogenic tanks before it can travel to the Moon. Once refueled, the vehicle flies to lunar orbit and docks with the Orion spacecraft or the Gateway space station. Astronauts transfer into Starship, which carries them down to the lunar surface. The lunar landing variant of Starship omits the aerodynamic flaps and the heavy thermal heat shield because it never reenters Earth’s atmosphere. Detailed mission phases are covered in our guide to the Artemis program explained.
China structured its lunar landing plan around a dual-launch architecture using two identical Long March 10 rockets. The country established an official goal of landing astronauts on the Moon before 2030. In this operational plan, CALT launches the first Long March 10 from Hainan island carrying the Mengzhou crew spacecraft with Chinese astronauts aboard. A short time later, a second Long March 10 launches from the same coastal site carrying the uncrewed Lanyue lunar lander.
Both spacecraft fly directly to lunar orbit without requiring orbital propellant transfers in low Earth orbit. The Mengzhou capsule and the Lanyue lander dock with each other while circling the Moon. Two astronauts transfer from the crew module into the lander, descend to the lunar surface, and carry out surface operations. The ascent stage of the lander returns them to lunar orbit, docks with Mengzhou, and transfers the crew for the return flight to Earth. This dual-launch approach avoids the technical challenge of in-orbit cryogenic refueling depots. The architecture requires China to build, check out, and launch two heavy-lift rockets from Wenchang in rapid sequence. We explore this operational campaign in our overview of the China Moon landing 2030 program.
Launch Sites and Infrastructure Requirements
Launch facilities reflect the massive physical differences between these two systems. SpaceX conducts all Starship launches from Starbase at Boca Chica, Texas. SpaceX constructed orbital launch mounts supported by tall steel integration towers. These towers house the mechanical catch arms used to lift, stack, and catch the returning rocket stages. Because Starship produces immense acoustic energy and thrust at liftoff, SpaceX installed a high-pressure water deluge system built from heavy steel plates beneath the mount.
SpaceX is expanding this infrastructure outside Texas. Construction crews are building additional Starship launch mounts at Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. These East Coast pads will support high-cadence launches for the Artemis program and commercial satellite deployments once testing concludes.
China launches the Long March 10 from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan island. Wenchang was built specifically to accommodate heavy-lift rockets that cannot travel by Chinese rail networks. Rail tunnels inside China restrict rocket stage diameters to 3.35 meters. Because Long March 10 uses 5-meter cores, CALT must transport the stages from manufacturing facilities in Tianjin by maritime cargo ships.
Wenchang offers distinct operational advantages. Its coastal position ensures that spent rocket stages and booster cores fall into the South China Sea rather than over populated inland territory. The launch site sits at roughly 19 degrees north latitude. This low latitude provides a boost from Earth’s rotational speed, allowing the rocket to carry more mass into orbit per kilogram of propellant burned.
Choosing Between Mission Philosophies
These two launch systems serve different strategic objectives and organizational structures. Neither rocket is universally superior, and each design carries distinct tradeoffs.
A government agency or aerospace analyst looking for a direct, predictable lunar architecture will see clear advantages in the Long March 10 program:
- Long March 10 relies on proven multi-core kerolox and hydrolox rocket engineering.
- The rocket bypasses the complex requirement for in-space cryogenic orbital refueling depots.
- CALT published clear, verified payload figures for trans-lunar injection.
- The system focuses exclusively on national exploration targets without balancing commercial satellite deployments.
Conversely, organizations focused on low-cost orbital mass and deep-space infrastructure will favor SpaceX’s Starship:
- Starship pursues full reusability for both the booster and upper stage to eliminate hardware loss.
- Methane propellant burns cleanly and avoids coking inside engine components during multiple restarts.
- The 9-meter vehicle hull provides unmatched internal volume for heavy scientific instruments or lunar base cargo.
- The launch system aims to deploy large commercial satellite constellations such as Starlink in high-volume batches.
Starship is not designed for customers needing expendable, single-launch direct injections without orbital refueling infrastructure. Long March 10 is not designed for commercial space companies seeking reusable, low-cost access to low Earth orbit.
What Would Change This Comparison
Several concrete testing milestones over the coming years could alter the balance between Starship and Long March 10.
For Starship, a successful upper-stage catch at the Starbase launch tower during Flight 14 or subsequent tests would validate SpaceX’s rapid reusability concept. SpaceX still needs to resolve the Super Heavy relight failure that caused the loss of Booster 20 during Flight 13. SpaceX must also demonstrate orbital velocity, successful in-space propellant transfer, and long-duration cryogenic storage before Starship can fly lunar astronauts for NASA.
For Long March 10, the primary milestone will be the first orbital launch of the integrated three-core heavy vehicle from Wenchang. Flight demonstrations of the Mengzhou spacecraft and Lanyue lander will confirm whether China remains on schedule for its crewed lunar landing target before 2030. Any delays in manufacturing or engine integration would push that timeline to the right.
To explore the broader field of heavy-lift vehicles competing for these exploration missions, read our complete guide to most powerful rockets compared.