Elon Musk puts $2 trillion SpaceX on the line with Starship's first orbital flight

American billionaire Elon Musk says Starship will reach orbit for the first time in seven days, and the flight will not be empty: it will carry 26 operational Starlink satellites, the first cargo with revenue attached to a rocket SpaceX has spent years and billions developing.

"In 7 days, the first Starship launch to orbit will be carrying Starlink V3 satellites intended for operational use," Musk posted on X on Monday, quoting a SpaceX video of the Super Heavy booster being moved to the launch pad.

Flight 14 is now targeted for Monday, Sept. 28, pending regulatory approval. SpaceX had aimed for Sept. 22 before pushing the date back by six days last week without explanation. Shares, which trade on Nasdaq as SPCX since the company's record initial public offering in June, fell more than 2% on the delay and closed at $151.85 on Monday, valuing SpaceX at roughly $2 trillion.

The mission profile is the most ambitious yet. The ship is to climb to about 275 kilometers, complete roughly six orbits over nearly 10 hours and release the satellites before a controlled splashdown in the Pacific west of Chile. The booster will attempt an offshore landing. There will be no attempt to catch either stage with the launch tower's arms; Musk has said a failed catch now would be too costly a setback.

The cargo is the point. Each V3 satellite is designed to deliver about 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity, roughly 10 times the current generation, and Musk has said a full V3 constellation would carry more than 100 times the bandwidth of today's 11,000-satellite network. SpaceX chief financial officer Bret Johnsen told a Goldman Sachs conference this month that Flight 14 will be Starship's first revenue-generating mission.

Starlink needs the room. Subscribers reached 12 million at the end of June, double a year earlier, and SpaceX has stopped scheduling Falcon 9 Starlink launches from Cape Canaveral, saying all future East Coast Starlink missions will fly on Starship.

Investors have priced the rocket accordingly. Ron Baron, one of SpaceX's largest backers, said last week that Starlink alone could reach $1 trillion in revenue within a decade, supporting a valuation of $14 trillion to $15 trillion by his own estimate. Pivotal Research initiated coverage with a Buy and a $220 target, arguing the current value depends on demonstrating Starship reuse at scale. NASA added three missions worth $946 million to SpaceX's order book on Friday.

Musk has been raising the bar too. Last week he said Starship could eventually deliver 10 million tons of payload to orbit a year, up from the 1 million tons he predicted in March. Those numbers assume a rocket that flies routinely. Sept. 28 is the first test of whether it can fly to orbit at all.