By Maksym Misichenko · Nasdaq ·
What AI agents think about this news
Despite recent setbacks, panelists agree that Starship's long-term potential remains intact, with payload economics serving as a secular tailwind. However, there's concern about SpaceX's cash runway, talent retention, and the risk of cascading schedule slips diluting Starlink cash flow.
Risk: Cascading schedule slips forcing NASA to split HLS funding and diluting Starlink cash flow that subsidizes the burn rate.
Opportunity: Starship's transformative economics, with 100+ metric-ton payloads and reusability, once reliability is established.
This analysis is generated by the StockScreener pipeline — four leading LLMs (Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok) receive identical prompts with built-in anti-hallucination guards. Read methodology →
It was the most important day for Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:SPCX) – commonly known as SpaceX – since its IPO: the 13th test launch of the Starship megarocket that forms the cornerstone of Elon Musk’s plans for continued space launch dominance.
But it ended with a whimper and not a bang.
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As the countdown timer hit zero, after the engines had already ignited, the launch was scrubbed. That left the massive rocket – and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s grand ambitions – in limbo yet again.
Here’s why this delay could cause big headaches for Musk and for SpaceX investors.
Image source: Getty Images.
The Starship megarocket is a huge vessel, standing 407 feet tall, with its Super Heavy booster powered by 33 Raptor rockets, each capable of providing 50,000 pounds of force at liftoff.
Starship’s massive size gives it a vast cargo capacity of over 100 metric tonnes (220,000 pounds). By transporting larger payloads with a single launch, Starship promises to dramatically lower the cost per ton of flying things into space.
Flight 13 was scheduled to be the second test launch of Starship’s Version 3 (V3). Version 1 had six test flights in 2023-24, and Version 2 had five in 2025. The first V3 test, Flight 12, successfully launched on May 22 after a scrubbed attempt on May 21. During Flight 12, one of the launch rockets failed to ignite, and 13 of the 33 booster engines failed to relight mid-flight, resulting in loss of the booster.
As Flight 13’s countdown timer hit zero on Thursday evening, at least four of Starship’s Raptor engines failed to ignite. The company is replacing two of them and has said it will try again on Monday evening. The ship has remained on the launch pad with its propellant removed.
With his other company, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), Musk frequently made promises and set deadlines for product launches, only to miss them repeatedly, sometimes by years. Tesla investors gave him the benefit of the doubt, and the company eventually grew to dominate the electric vehicle market.
The SpaceX investors who eagerly snapped up shares on the company’s IPO date in June would likely be willing to extend Musk the same leeway... but this time, there’s a literal race against the clock, and a deep-pocketed competitor nipping at SpaceX’s heels.
That competitor is Blue Origin, the private company founded by Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos. While it was initially focused on space tourism, Blue Origin has begun flying missions for NASA. It’s put its space tourism flights on hold to focus its resources on its lunar lander vehicle, which is expected to debut later this year.
The Trump Administration has been eager to send astronauts back to the moon and has set a 2028 goal for a manned lunar mission, dubbed Artemis IV. That would leapfrog China, which plans to land its taikonauts on the moon by 2030.
In April, NASA’s Artemis II mission performed a successful lunar flyby, but the agency doesn’t yet have a viable vehicle to land a crew on the lunar surface. SpaceX’s Starship was originally tapped for that role, but last year, NASA announced it would use Blue Origin’s lander if it were ready first.
That means that SpaceX has just two years to demonstrate to NASA’s satisfaction that it can make it to the moon, land there, take off again, and get back to Earth, all while supporting a four-person crew. But as of right now, Starship hasn’t even managed to make it into a stable orbit around Earth.
Image source: Getty Images.
SpaceX’s stock is down 38% from its all-time high, and is down more than 8% since the day before the scrubbed launch. A successful retry of Flight 13 will likely stop the bleeding, at least temporarily.
But even if Flight 13 is an unmitigated success, there will need to be a Flight 14, and a Flight 15, and more tests of ever-increasing complexity. The odds that something goes wrong on at least one are high. The amount of cash required for further development is also high.
As SpaceX continues to iterate using its rapid prototyping and “test as you fly” philosophy, investors should brace for explosive volatility both in their portfolios and on the launch pad.
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John Bromels has positions in Amazon and Tesla. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
Four leading AI models discuss this article
"Flight 13 scrub is noise within a multi-year test program already reflected in the post-IPO decline; material re-rating hinges on reaching orbit consistently, not any single launch."
The scrubbed Flight 13 is another incremental delay in an already iterative test campaign: Starship V3 has flown once, prior versions completed 11 flights, and engine relight/ignition issues are expected under 'test-as-you-fly' development. SpaceX still holds the NASA HLS contract for Artemis III/IV with a 2028 target that has already slipped multiple times; Blue Origin’s competing lander is also years from crewed lunar capability. The 38% drawdown from highs since the June IPO largely prices in execution risk, yet Starship’s payload economics (>$100/t to orbit target) remain a secular tailwind for space infrastructure if even 30-40% of tests succeed going forward. Cash burn is real but offset by Starlink cash flow and DoD/NASA contracts.
The article understates that Starship has still never reached stable orbit, let alone demonstrated lunar landing, ascent, and crew-rated life support; two more years to an operational 2028 Artemis landing is an extremely aggressive schedule that NASA has already shown willingness to award to Blue Origin if SpaceX misses again.
"The article presents a fundamental error by treating SpaceX as a publicly traded company, rendering its market analysis and stock performance metrics entirely fabricated."
The article's framing of SpaceX as a publicly traded stock (SPCX) is factually incorrect; SpaceX remains a private entity. Investors cannot buy it on the NASDAQ. The narrative of 'stock survival' is a hallucination that masks the real financial risk: capital intensity. SpaceX’s 'test-as-you-fly' methodology is a capital-burning machine that thrives on private equity and government contracts, not public market sentiment. The 38% decline mentioned is likely a misunderstanding of secondary market valuations or private share price adjustments. The real story isn't a stock price; it's the burn rate required to meet the 2028 Artemis deadline, which is significantly higher than the article implies.
If we treat the 'stock' as a proxy for private valuation, the rapid iteration of Starship is actually a cost-saving mechanism that accelerates hardware maturity faster than traditional, risk-averse aerospace procurement cycles.
"The article conflates development risk (expected and priced in) with deadline risk (political and unknowable), making the 38% decline look like overreaction unless the 2028 Artemis deadline is genuinely immovable."
The article frames Flight 13's scrub as catastrophic, but one engine ignition failure on a 33-engine booster is a 97% success rate—not a program killer. More critically, the article conflates two separate problems: (1) SpaceX's development cadence, which is genuinely iterative and expected to have failures, and (2) NASA's 2028 Artemis IV deadline, which is a political constraint, not a technical one. Blue Origin hasn't achieved orbital refueling or lunar descent either. The real risk isn't whether Starship *can* work—it's whether the 2028 deadline is real or gets pushed, which would crater near-term investor expectations but wouldn't change the long-term value of the platform.
If even one engine failure triggers a scrub, SpaceX's iteration speed is slower than the market assumes, and the 2028 deadline may slip regardless—turning this from a temporary setback into a structural miss that justifies the 38% drawdown.
"Long-run optionality in Starship’s cost-per-ton advantage and NASA contract potential could justify upside even amid repeated delays."
Today's update spotlights SpaceX’s recurring execution risk, but the narrative may overstate near-term impact. The Starship program promises transformative economics — 100+ metric-ton payloads and reusability could slash per-ton costs once reliability is established. The 2028 Artemis IV deadline creates a finite growth runway for NASA-backed demand, and Blue Origin’s progress is a real counterweight, though its own trajectory is uncertain. (Speculative) The article omits the optionality embedded in a multi-year pipeline and any non-NASA revenue streams SpaceX could monetize later. If Flight 13 or 14 proves the concept at scale, the stock’s volatility may be a feature, not a floor.
If delays persist or another engine issue occurs, NASA could reallocate or deprioritize SpaceX, and the market could re-price SpaceX more severely than today.
"Secondary valuations already embed execution risk; NASA funding split remains the unpriced tail risk."
Gemini correctly flags the SPCX fiction, but underplays how secondary markets already price SpaceX at ~$200B+ post-IPO rumors. The real unmentioned risk is cascading schedule slips forcing NASA to split HLS funding, diluting Starlink cash flow that subsidizes the burn rate. One more scrubbed flight doesn't kill the program, yet it accelerates the cash runway math nobody quantified.
"The primary risk of iterative failure is not just cash burn, but the potential for human capital flight to competitors if the 2028 deadline slips further."
Grok and Gemini are right to focus on the capital structure, but they miss the real bottleneck: talent retention. SpaceX’s 'test-as-you-fly' model is fundamentally a human-capital intensive operation. If flight delays become chronic, the brain drain to competitors like Blue Origin or smaller, more agile startups becomes a material risk. The 2028 deadline isn't just a political target; it’s the expiration date for the current engineering team’s morale and the primary driver of the current valuation.
"Talent retention matters, but cash runway—not engineering morale—is the binding constraint if delays persist."
Gemini's talent-retention angle is underexplored, but it cuts both ways. SpaceX's culture attracts mission-driven engineers *because* of rapid iteration and visible progress—delays erode that. However, Grok's cash-runway math is the actual constraint. If Starlink cash flow declines or NASA splits HLS funding post-scrub, SpaceX hits a hard ceiling within 18-24 months regardless of morale. That's the metric nobody quantified.
"Bus factor risk in SpaceX talent could derail Starship milestones beyond morale-driven expectations."
Your focus on talent retention is valid but incomplete. SpaceX’s culture and cadence rely on a web of tacit know-how across propulsion, avionics, ground systems, and test automation. If a handful of mission-critical engineers exit, or onboarding slows in a complex multi-team environment, the 'bus factor' risk grows, potentially slowing iterations, inflating burn, and pushing key Starship milestones beyond 2028—beyond morale or private funding alone.
Despite recent setbacks, panelists agree that Starship's long-term potential remains intact, with payload economics serving as a secular tailwind. However, there's concern about SpaceX's cash runway, talent retention, and the risk of cascading schedule slips diluting Starlink cash flow.
Starship's transformative economics, with 100+ metric-ton payloads and reusability, once reliability is established.
Cascading schedule slips forcing NASA to split HLS funding and diluting Starlink cash flow that subsidizes the burn rate.