SpaceX reveals $15 billion Starship bet as launch test advances
SpaceX said Starship has already cost more than $15 billion, then sent its newest test rocket to an Indian Ocean splashdown about an hour after liftoff.
SpaceX is asking investors to back a rocket program that has already burned through more than $15 billion, a huge bet on a reusable system that remains central to the company’s Moon and Mars plans. The filing made clear that Starlink, not Starship, is still carrying the business, with about $11 billion in revenue last year and more than half of SpaceX’s total sales.
The company’s Form S-1, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on May 20, 2026, showed SpaceX lost about $4.9 billion in 2025 on revenue of more than $18 billion. It also set out a fast-moving commercialization schedule: SpaceX expects Starship to begin payload deliveries to Earth orbit in the second half of 2026, start using the vehicle for Starlink broadband satellite launches later in 2026, and begin launching next-generation V2 mobile satellites in 2027.
That timeline gives fresh weight to Starship’s 12th flight test, which lifted off on May 22 from Starbase, Texas, at 5:30 p.m. CT. The launch marked the first flight of the Starship and Super Heavy V3 vehicles and the new Raptor 3 engines, and it was the first Starship mission to deploy modified Starlink satellites to image the vehicle in space. The rocket reached the cruise phase and splashed down in the Indian Ocean about an hour later.
The test also exposed how much remains unresolved. Starship lost one of its six upper-stage engines during the flight, and the Super Heavy booster was lost after a failed boostback burn. For SpaceX, that is progress and warning at once: the vehicle is advancing toward operational use, but not yet close to the kind of routine recovery needed for the airline-like reusability Elon Musk has long described.
That tension sits at the center of SpaceX’s market pitch. Starship is not only tied to the company’s Mars rhetoric, but also to future lunar work, including NASA-linked efforts around Gateway and a planned circumlunar flight. With billions already spent, revenue still concentrated in Starlink, and only a narrow window before promised commercial launches, SpaceX is now asking investors to believe the hardest part of the program is nearly over.
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