SpaceX will make some historical past this month, if all goes in accordance with plan.
The corporate goals to launch the 14th take a look at flight of its Starship megarocket earlier than August is out, Elon Musk stated at the moment (Aug. 4) throughout SpaceX‘s first-ever quarterly earnings name. Starship will deploy viable payloads into orbit on Flight 14, one thing it has by no means achieved earlier than — and there might be different unprecedented motion as nicely.
“I would say issues look superb, and that is why we, assuming we obtain regulatory approval to take action, will try and catch the Ship with the tower on the following flight, which is tentatively scheduled for the tip of this month,” Musk stated throughout at the moment’s name.
“Ship” is the 171-foot-tall (52 meters) higher stage of Starship, which additionally encompasses a big first-stage booster referred to as Tremendous Heavy. Each of those components are designed to be totally and quickly reusable — a breakthrough that, mixed with Starship’s immense energy, will revolutionize spaceflight, in accordance with SpaceX.
And “issues look superb” is a reference to Starship Flight 13, which lifted off on July 24. Musk was speaking particularly about Ship’s efficiency on that suborbital jaunt, which ended with the higher stage’s mushy splashdown within the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Western Australia.
Ship’s warmth defend survived the harrowing downward journey by means of Earth’s environment in nice form on Flight 13, in accordance with SpaceX (as did the whole car, which remains to be in a single piece to today). And that provides SpaceX confidence to plan for a tower catch on Flight 14 — a vital part of Starship’s future reusability.
“I do not wish to jinx it or something, however I believe I would think about the warmth defend downside solved at this level,” Musk stated.
Starship’s two launch towers at its Starbase web site in South Texas function massive “chopstick” arms, which stack Tremendous Heavy and Ship atop the pad — and may catch the autos after they come again to Earth on the finish of their missions.
SpaceX has already executed a tower catch with Tremendous Heavy on three Starship take a look at flights, but it surely has not but tried to take action with Ship. So Flight 14 may very well be momentous, offered SpaceX will get permission from regulators to make an try.
Flight 14 can even carry up a batch of SpaceX’s V3 Starlink satellites, a bigger and extra succesful model of the spacecraft that at present populate the corporate’s broadband megaconstellation. Flight 13 toted 20 Starlink V3s, however Ship deployed them into suborbital house; the satellites might be positioned into an operational orbit on the upcoming mission, if all goes to plan, Musk stated.
SpaceX goes public
Musk based SpaceX as a personal firm again in March 2002. It stayed that manner till this previous June 12, when SpaceX went public by way of the richest IPO in historical past, which raised $86 billion and valued the corporate at $1.77 trillion.
SpaceX now has to offer earnings experiences each quarter, beginning with Q2 of this yr. And these first publicized numbers present appreciable enchancment in comparison with a yr in the past, in accordance with the corporate.
The newly launched report states that complete income within the March-June time interval was up 92% over the identical stretch in 2025 — $7.8 billion versus $4.1 billion. And SpaceX had a internet loss throughout this span of $541 million, down from a internet lack of $1.0 billion in Q2 2025.
Greater than half of this quarter’s income — about $4.3 billion — got here by way of the corporate’s Starlink satellite-internet megaconstellation. That quantity crystallizes a reality that has been obvious for some time now — SpaceX isn’t just a launch firm anymore.
Rockets will usher in a smaller and smaller share of SpaceX income over the approaching years, if all goes in accordance with plan. Launch will proceed ceding this monetary floor to Starlink, but in addition, more and more, to SpaceX’s synthetic intelligence (AI) operations.
Certainly, SpaceX sees itself changing into increasingly more of an AI outfit over time. A couple of months in the past, the corporate revealed that, over the lengthy haul, it is focusing on a “complete addressable market” of $28.5 trillion per yr, practically $23 trillion of which might be within the area of “enterprise AI functions.” That is fairly an formidable purpose; in 2025, the gross home product of the whole United States was rather less than $31 trillion.
Talking of formidable: SpaceX plans to make a number of this cash by way of an orbiting constellation of a million AI information facilities, which collectively will comprise a constellation referred to as Starmind. (Sure, SpaceX has a factor for “Star” names.)
SpaceX expects to begin launching operational Starmind spacecraft in 2027, Musk stated throughout at the moment’s name. It should take a number of Starship launches to get the community up and working, however he would not see that as a bottleneck.
“We anticipate the cadence of flights to be rising quickly, and, in all probability a yr from now, we might be doing a minimum of one flight a day, probably extra,” Musk stated.
