[Retric]

Depends on what you consider a machine, the largest power grids are more powerful. Though those are arguably multiple devices acting together not a single device. Most powerful local machine that’s close to steady state is probably Three Gorges Dam at 22.5 GW.

Starship is like a top drag racer where it’s quickly damaging itself in normal operation, but it’s the most powerful local machine that can last for over a minute.

However, there’s a lot of pulsed devices that briefly get to much higher energy levels like artillery or experiments that charge capacitor banks for massive discharges like Z machine which briefly hits 300TW.

[jakeinspace]

I might be off here, but I think the super heavy booster actually puts out more power than 3 Gorges. At stage separation, the booster and starship were moving at ~5500 kph, or about 1500 m/s. The nominal maximum thrust of the super heavy booster is given as 75,000 KN on Wikipedia. Possibly that level of thrust is only happening ar liftoff, I’m not sure, but if the engines were still burning that hot at stage sep, then that would give an instantaneous power output of 75,000,000 N * 1500 m/s = 112.5 GW.

Edit: misread your comment, we’re in agreement. But I’ll leave the arithmetic.

[Retric]

Right ballpark but missing a few important caveats. Rocket engines generally throttle down to maintain a constant acceleration, otherwise you need to add more structural support to the following stages which costs weight.

Also, calculating power output like that is misleading. A solar powered ion engine on a probe has constant solar power and constant acceleration but would have increasing calculated power output over time as it keeps accelerating. What’s going on is rather than the engine being more powerful the propellant starts with more kinetic energy.