SpaceX's Starship rocket launched again. The 14th test flight for the huge, fully reusable rocket is a reminder of Elon Musk's ambitions, which Wall Street has embraced.
SpaceX shares rose as high as $150.63 after reversing a premarket decline, but turned lower by late morning. The stock was recently at $148.09.
The launch window opened at 8:15 a.m. Eastern time, and investors can re-watch it here.
It was the first time Starship went into orbit around the Earth. Prior tests were suborbital, which means the ship never gets to the speed required to, well, not fall back to the ground. One of the upper stage engines was lost, though. SpaceX took a few minutes, but made the decision to go for orbit.
Starship is now circling the Earth after deploying 26 working version three Starlink satellites. The larger V3 satellites are more capable and need the larger Starship to enter service. V3 satellites will help SpaceX expand its Starlink space-based broadband business into mobile wireless communications. Today, Starlink has more than 11,000 satellites serving more than 12 million customers.
The drop came despite a new bullish rating from CLSA. The broker launched coverage with a Buy rating and $250 price target, according to ratings aggregators.
Barron's hasn't seen a copy of the report yet. Overall, 76% of analysts covering SpaceX stock rate it Buy, according to FactSet. The average Buy-rating ratio for S&P 500 stocks typically ranges from 55% to 60%. The average analyst price target for SpaceX stock is about $224.
Starship, of course, is new, and SpaceX is working out the kinks. Starship test flight number 13, which launched in July, was largely a success, with Starship deploying some V3 test satellites.
SpaceX already dominates the global launch business, handling a majority of the globe's space launch business. SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket 165 times in 2025. It should launch a similar number of times in 2026.
That impressive scale still belies what SpaceX is after in the long run. "Starship is two to three years away from hourly flights," tweeted CEO Elon Musk on Sunday.
SpaceX plans to launch Starship a lot, often carrying Starmind AI computing satellites. Musk's rocket and AI company plans to build a massive AI data center in orbit, using the power of the sun and vacuum of space to overcome power, cooling, and political bottlenecks to AI growth.
Hourly flights with fully reusable rockets would give SpaceX a cost advantage over terrestrial data centers and the ability to scale any space-based businesses much faster than anyone on Earth.
Its hard to fathom just what hourly flights of a huge rocket would mean for SpaceX, AI, and the telecom business. SpaceX, and Musk, have never lacked for ambition.