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They juiced the engines up big time with the Raptor 3 upgrade. The rest of the stack is leaner and meaner too, but engines are the single biggest upgrade.

It's why they have plans to elongate the stack further. If they have this much TWR to go around at liftoff, they can afford to cash in that extra thrust to pack more fuel.

> they have plans to elongate the stack further

Elongate the stack.

Pun employed intentionally.

Given how little payload is onboard at the moment, what an empty can starship is, i sure hope for their sake there is a lot a lot a lot of zip to spare right now.

The ship had a little over 34 tons of payload, but there should be almost no difference in thrust to weight ratio at launch for an empty vs full payload bay. The stack itself weighs over 5,000 tons at launch. Assuming it’s 5,000 tons at liftoff, adding another 65 tons of payload would change the thrust to weight ratio from 1.65 to 1.63.

The more you accelerate early instead of later, the less fuel you have to subsequently carry to get to the same speed so it's more efficient.

Felix on the "what about it" YouTube channel says flight 14 will be even faster. That's going to be something to see.