SpaceX is preparing to launch its Starship rocket from South Texas on Friday after scrubbing a planned launch attempt on Thursday moments before liftoff, NPR reported. The company’s Starship mission comes at a critical time for SpaceX as it prepares to go public, NPR said in a report hosted by Leila Fadel and written by Geoff Brumfiel.
NPR said SpaceX had fueled the rocket and had it ready to go when the countdown was interrupted by what officials described as an issue with the launch tower. An archived recording included in NPR’s report captured personnel saying they did not expect to resolve the launch-tower issue in time and that they were standing down from the launch.
When the rocket does launch, NPR said, it will be the first test flight of a newly redesigned version of Starship. Brumfiel reported that earlier versions had a roughly 50/50 success rate, but that the upcoming attempt needs to succeed given the timing of SpaceX’s plan to pursue an initial public offering next month.
NPR reported that Franco Granda, a research analyst with the firm PitchBook, framed Starship as central to SpaceX’s market story for public investors. Granda said SpaceX’s situation is “crazy business” in which valuations have expanded beyond traditional frames, adding that the company’s expectations hinge on “the promise of the future potential” and the new markets Starship may unlock.
Brumfiel reported that SpaceX intends to use Starship to expand its Starlink internet satellite constellation and to build AI data centers in space, and that NASA plans to use Starship to send astronauts to the moon. NPR said billions of dollars in revenue depend on those ambitions and that, in Granda’s view, without Starship, it would be harder for SpaceX to justify the “trillions” its chief executive Elon Musk wants it to be worth.
Tim Farrar, president of TMF Associates, told NPR that Starship is “really critical” to those plans. Farrar also said that while SpaceX’s plan calls for Starship to become a cheap and easily reusable rocket capable of flying multiple times a day, that outcome is still “a long way off,” indicating that near-term investors’ expectations may be shaped more by conviction than by current demonstrated performance.
NPR said new financial disclosure documents released ahead of the IPO show SpaceX is losing money and carrying nearly $30 billion of debt, much of it tied to the company’s struggling AI business. NPR reported that in the first three months of this year, SpaceX lost over $4 billion, and that those figures could give some investors pause—though Farrar said SpaceX’s valuation depends on the belief that Elon Musk can deliver large future returns rather than on current operations.
Farrar said the valuation is “completely dependent on the degree to which people believe in Elon Musk,” NPR reported, and that it is not dependent on the current businesses. Brumfiel reported that, under that view, as long as investors believe Musk can “make a fortune in the future,” they may continue to provide capital “today.”