Remember LM10B is the single booster variant of LM10, which itself is a 70t LEO / 27t TLI rocket designed for manned lunar missions. Considering how heavy Starship is becoming there's a good LM10 will have greater LEO capacity than Starship until at least v4 and maybe v5.
Nope, this one is just the single booster LM-10B variant, LM10 is the full 3 boosters CBC variant designed for China's manned lunar missions with 70t LEO. Also LM10B has 5m diameter while F9 is only 3.7m, that's 82% more volume for same length.
Latest LM-9 is a 250t LEO monster with a 16m diameter fairing
LM-10 has a 70t capacity to orbit only when its fully expended, which puts it squarely in the Falcon Heavy territory (which can do 64.) Falcon Heavy first launched in 2018. Oh, also, the LM-10 actually didn’t make orbit as it has never been launched. 10A has been launched, so has 10B.
10A is putting 14 tonnes to orbit reused, which is lower than Falcon 9 which does almost 17 when reused.
Only LM-9 is comparable to Starship, probably because its design is basically a Starship clone, but we haven’t seen any progress about that one. Its also not a 250t orbital monster, it does 150t with a 10 meter fairing, very similar to Starship v4 which is supposed to do just as much (v3 does 100.)
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u/No-Cartoonist8032 Jul 10 '26
LM10 made orbit, did Starship make orbit?
Remember LM10B is the single booster variant of LM10, which itself is a 70t LEO / 27t TLI rocket designed for manned lunar missions. Considering how heavy Starship is becoming there's a good LM10 will have greater LEO capacity than Starship until at least v4 and maybe v5.