How Starship Flight 12 Will Help Make the SpaceX IPO a Smashing Success

The SpaceX Starship just keeps getting better and better.

On April 20, 2023, SpaceX conducted the first-ever "full-stack" test flight of its new Starship rocket, comprising a Super Heavy booster and a Starship, or simply "Ship," second stage. Both elements are designed to be fully reusable, able to launch, land, and fly again.

Neither actually has flown more than once.

But SpaceX's most recent Starship test flight last week makes it clear: SpaceX is getting close.

Image source: Getty Images.

Starship and the SpaceX IPO

Actually, it's getting close in a couple of ways. On June 12, SpaceX is expected to make its Nasdaq debut via an initial public offering (IPO), entering the public markets with the ticker "SPCX" and a valuation that could approach $2 trillion. At the same time, the day when Starship turns from a money-consuming research and development (R&D) project into a revenue-generating space monster is also clearly approaching.

But let's get through the bad news first: The Super Heavy (SH) booster suffered an anomaly after delivering Ship to orbit last week. While details remain unclear at present, and both SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating, it appears one of SH's engines may have exploded during the "boostback" phase of the flight, extinguishing several other engines that were supposed to help slow the booster's descent for a controlled water landing. While one plucky engine (out of 33 total engines on the booster) stuck it out and kept firing to the bitter end, it wasn't enough to slow the booster's descent, and it ended up crashing uncontrolled into the Gulf of Mexico.

So that's the bad news. The good news is that basically everything else with the mission went right.

Although SH crashed, Ship performed marvelously:

• Carrying 45 tons of cargo into low-Earth orbit, including two fully functioning Starlink satellites (which performed an on-site inspection of Ship's heat shield) and 20 dummy Starlinks launched solely as an experiment.
• Releasing all 22 satellites to their planned orbits.
• Surviving reentry with its heat shield tiles in remarkably good repair.
• And maneuvering to perform a textbook water landing in the Indian Ocean.

And CEO Elon Musk seemed pleased as punch with Starship's performance.

The Starship V3 heat shield held well https://t.co/iLNkKi7poq

-- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 23, 2026

What Starship means for SpaceX

There's good reason for that because, as we learned from the SpaceX prospectus released last week, a functioning Starship could be absolutely key to SpaceX's success as a public company post-IPO.

Data source: SpaceX IPO Prospectus, all numbers in millions. SpaceX earned a net profit of $791 in 2024. SpaceX's net loss in 2025 was $4,937.

The table above, drawn from the Prospectus, confirms what we've long suspected -- that Starlink, now known as SpaceX's connectivity business, is (1) SpaceX's biggest revenue driver by far, accounting for 61% of the company's annual sales, (2) the company's only profitable business, and (3) its fastest growing business.

SpaceX is placing a big bet on Starship helping to keep this growth momentum going by building two new -- bigger and better -- versions of its Starlink satellites that are so massive and so bulky that they cannot fit within the fairing of a Falcon 9 rocket. Only Starship will be large enough to place Starlink V3 and Starlink V2 Mobile satellites into orbit.

But once in orbit, they should do wonders for the connectivity business. V3 is designed to offer 1 terabit per second (Tbps) download speeds -- 20 times the speed of the company's existing V2 Mini satellites. V2 Mobile, meanwhile, will expand access to mobile broadband data for direct-to-cell customers.

As SpaceX brings these satellites online, then progresses to field even more robust V4 and V5 versions -- 100,000 satellites in all, according to Musk -- Starship will be instrumental in making it happen.

And last week's Starship Flight Test 12 was the strongest evidence yet that it will happen.

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