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| Starship lifts off from Starbase, Texas, on Sept. 28 on its first flight to orbit. (spacex-starship-reaches-orbit-first-time.jpg) |
SpaceX Starship just did what 13 straight flights could not. On Monday, September 28, the most powerful rocket ever built reached orbit for the first time, dropped off 26 next-generation Starlink satellites, and came home. Then the stock fell.
That is the strangest part of the biggest day in Starship history, and it says a lot about how much the market already expected.
The Launch That Almost Didn't Go to Orbit
Starship Flight 14 lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday morning. The 407-foot stack of Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage was carrying the rocket's first operational payload. Every earlier flight since 2023 had been deliberately suborbital, built so a failure would send the ship straight back into the ocean.
This one nearly ended the same way. During the climb, one of the ship's six Raptor engines shut down early. SpaceX's webcast host said the team would not commit to orbit, and for a tense stretch it looked like the mission was being called off. Flight controllers checked the data, decided the ship was healthy enough, and gave the go. About 25 minutes after liftoff, a single Raptor engine fired to push Starship into orbit.
The Most Powerful Rocket Ever Flown
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| Caption: Starship released all 26 Starlink V3 satellites, its first operational payload. (spacex-starship-deploys-26-starlink-v3- satellites.jpg) |
Starship is a different class of machine from anything else flying. At liftoff its engines produce more than 18 million pounds of thrust. For comparison, the Space Shuttle managed about 5.3 million pounds, SpaceX's own Falcon Heavy about 5 million, and NASA's Space Launch System, the most powerful rocket currently in operation, about 8.8 million. That is less than half of what Starship generates.
Those numbers explain why SpaceX believes one vehicle can change the economics of spaceflight. Starship V3 is designed to carry around 100 metric tons to orbit, and the whole system is built to be reused instead of thrown away after a single trip.
26 Starlink V3 Satellites Deployed
Once in orbit, Starship released all 26 Starlink V3 satellites. SpaceX says every one made contact and is working normally. Each V3 satellite is designed to carry roughly ten times the capacity of the older V2 generation. SpaceX's own comparison was that this single flight delivered bandwidth equal to about 20 Falcon 9 launches.
The satellites will now use their own thrusters to raise their orbits and run checkouts, and SpaceX says they could start serving customers within a few weeks. Together, the 26 satellites add about 26 terabits per second to the Starlink network.
Three of the satellites carry cameras aimed back at the ship to photograph its heat shield, data SpaceX needs if it wants to bring Starship all the way back to its launch site.
Why Reaching Orbit Changes Everything
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| Starship's upper stage tipped over and burst into flames after its Pacific splashdown. (spacex-starship-flight-14-splashdown-fireball.jpg) |
SpaceX now trades as SPCX after the largest IPO in history, which raised $86 billion in June. The stock briefly jumped to about $150 right after the launch, then faded and closed near $145, down roughly 2 to 3 percent. It is still below where it started after the IPO, even though analysts hold a consensus price target around $224.
The reason is simple. Reaching orbit answered an old question, but investors are now asking a harder one: can SpaceX reuse the hardware and fly it often? The company's own filings say Starship is meant to cut the cost of reaching orbit by 99 percent or more, and that only works if the same ship flies again and again.
What Comes Next
The next milestone is the one that matters most. SpaceX has already caught its giant booster with the launch tower's mechanical arms on several flights, starting with Flight 5 in October 2024. Musk now says SpaceX will try the same trick with the Starship upper stage on Flight 15, and he puts the odds of a first-try catch at "at least 50 or 60 percent." Air traffic planning documents list Flight 15 no earlier than October 19, with the first Starship launch from Florida's Launch Complex 39A no earlier than October 30. Those dates are early targets and could slip.
SpaceX is also building for a much busier future. Beyond Texas and Florida, the company has announced plans for a $100 billion launch complex in southern Louisiana, a state that has never hosted an orbital launch. Musk says it will eventually have more than a dozen launch towers and support more than 30 Starship flights per day. Those are Musk's claims, and none of it exists yet.
The stakes go beyond Starlink. NASA is counting on a version of Starship to land astronauts on the Moon in 2028, and CNN reports SpaceX is under pressure to prove the vehicle is flight-proven well before then.
The Bottom Line
SpaceX Starship reached orbit, deployed a real payload, and survived re-entry, all after losing an engine on the way up. Wall Street's reaction says the easy part is over. The next test is whether Starship can be caught, reflown, and launched on a schedule that justifies SpaceX's valuation.