Starship’s launch – SpaceX is preparing a heavily redesigned Starship launch from Starbase, Texas, on Thursday—less than a month before investors expect an initial public offering. The outcome could sway IPO excitement, as the company spends billions developing Starship, with rep
For anyone watching SpaceX this week, the rocket on the pad isn’t just a vehicle—it’s a verdict in motion.
On Wednesday. May 20. 2026. SpaceX’s latest version of Starship. the largest rocket ever built. was undergoing testing as it was prepared for a test flight from Starbase. Texas. Later on Thursday. the company is set to attempt a launch of a heavily redesigned Starship that will fly with dozens of new Raptor 3 engines powered by a novel fuel system in the booster. The flight will also include upgraded avionics. satellites. and test ports for a future refueling system that could allow Starship to reach destinations such as the Moon and even Mars one day.
The timing matters. The launch is coming a little under a month before investors are expected to anticipate SpaceX’s much-anticipated initial public offering. Many analysts expect SpaceX to raise up to $75 billion and to be valued at up to $1.5 trillion—potentially the largest IPO ever. For that scale of money to appear rational. Wall Street will likely want proof that Starship can do what SpaceX keeps promising.
“Super important for the IPO,” said Franco Granda, a senior researcher who covers SpaceX for the data firm PitchBook. He said that if Starship’s launch goes badly, investor excitement for the IPO could fade “quite dramatically.”
Granda stressed that testing is inherently testing, and that failure often doesn’t automatically determine what comes later. Still, he said SpaceX will want to “get this one right.”
The financial disclosures released on Wednesday put numbers to that pressure. SpaceX is spending billions of dollars per year developing Starship. That development is eating into profits from its launch business: it operated at a $662 million loss in the first quarter of this year. In 2025 alone. the company spent a little over $3 billion on Starship development. and in the first quarter of 2026 it spent another $930 million.
SpaceX’s own disclosure makes the risk plain. It says: “Any failure or delay in the development of Starship at scale or in achieving the required launch cadence, reusability and capabilities thereafter would delay or limit our ability to execute our growth strategy.”
That growth strategy, at least on paper, depends on a radically different kind of flight rhythm. Starship is built to be reused—potentially again and again. Standing around 400 feet in height, the spacecraft is made of durable but heavy stainless steel. It sits atop an enormous booster called “Super Heavy,” which shoots it skyward using 33 Raptor engines. After Starship separates. it can ignite its six engines to get to space. while the booster is designed to fly back to Earth and land at its launchpad.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said the ultimate goal is for Starship to return to the pad. allowing the entire system to be reused almost instantaneously. If it works. the company argues it would sharply lower the cost of launches—something that could reshape both its short-term business and its long-term ambitions.
Starship is expected to carry larger, more capable satellites for the company’s Starlink internet service. It is also being developed into a lunar lander for NASA and as a possible rocket for Mars. Most recently. Musk proposed that Starship could be used to launch data centers into space. where they could use solar power to run AI chips.
At an event in March unveiling a new chip fabrication facility, Musk said: “Starship is a critical piece of the puzzle.” He added that to achieve SpaceX’s goals, “you need massive payload to space, and Starship will enable that.”
But Starship’s past is the reason uncertainty won’t go away.
The first version of Starship launched in April 2023. failed to separate from its booster. tumbled out of control. and then exploded. It took three tries before the rocket eventually reached space. The second version of the spacecraft saw multiple failed attempts throughout 2025, though its final two launches went as expected.
This third version is an ambitious redesign, and early commentary from close observers suggests it is evolving in the right direction—even if the most important test is still ahead.
Scott Manley. an engineer and YouTuber who closely tracks Starship’s development. described the latest version of Starship as more refined. He said heat tiles appear more carefully placed. and clunky. temporary fixes—like a “hot staging ring” that was bolted onto the booster after the first accident—have been integrated into the design.
“It looks more like a rocket and less like a bunch of grain silos welded together,” Manley said.
Manley is especially focused on the new Raptor 3 engines. He said they have been heavily redesigned to increase thrust and eliminate the need for bulky shielding on the bottom of the rocket. SpaceX has tested the engines extensively, but they haven’t been to space before.
“We don’t know how they’re going to perform under flight circumstances,” he said.
Even if Thursday’s launch goes smoothly, several hurdles remain before Starship can be treated as a dependable system. Starship’s heat shield has not yet proven durable enough to survive multiple trips through the atmosphere. And the spacecraft itself has yet to attempt a landing at the pad in Brownsville, Texas.
Getting all those moving parts to work reliably is also more complicated than what SpaceX has already accomplished with its existing rocket, Falcon 9, said Tim Farrar, the president of TMF associates, which analyzes mobile satellite services.
Starship is “a multidimensional problem that they haven’t actually solved yet,” Farrar said.
Farrar also questioned the math of valuation. “You can’t justify a valuation well in excess of a trillion dollars based on what SpaceX is doing today,” he said. “You’ve got to believe that Musk will come up with something much bigger than that.”
Between IPO expectations and the real-world uncertainty of a first-in-space engine set, Thursday’s test flight carries a weight that doesn’t need a slogan. The money is waiting. Starship has to earn it—one flight, one separation, one return at a time.
SpaceX Starship Super Heavy Raptor 3 Starbase Texas IPO initial public offering Elon Musk Starlink lunar lander Mars refueling system heat shield