SpaceX Moves Starship Launch To This Thursday. Here's What Investors Need to Know

After having to abort its launch on July 16, Space Exploration Technologies Corp (NASDAQ:SPCX) has rescheduled its 13th test flight for Starship to Thursday, July 23.

Starship is the company’s heavy-lift, fully reusable rocket that SpaceX has invested over $15 billion in so far.

The rocket is key to the company’s thesis, which hinges on SpaceX being able to launch super-heavy payloads into orbit with quick turnaround times.

With the stock struggling as of late, the market will be paying close attention to the upcoming test flight. Here’s what investors need to know.

Image source: Getty Images.

What the test flight will seek to accomplish

Starship’s 13th test flight is looking to perform similar objectives as previous test flights, specifically “a successful launch, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and landing burn at an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America,” according to the company.

Furthermore, the company has made changes to Starship’s hardware and software to correct issues that occurred on test flight 12.

SpaceX has altered the startup sequence, so Starship can better change directions. Test flight 12 had some issues with its directional flip, which was off by roughly 90 degrees.

Last Thursday, as Starship prepared for its 13th test flight, an automated abort command got triggered after four of the ship’s 33 engines failed to ignite, according to Reuters.

On X, SpaceX Founder Elon Musk wrote that the company is planning to replace two of the Raptor engines on Starship’s boosters.

Everything hinges on Starship

The market did not respond well to the launch abort last week, erasing $100 billion of market cap that day, despite setbacks on test flights not being all that uncommon.

But it shows just how crucial Starship is to SpaceX’s future.

A massive part of SpaceX’s total addressable market and therefore valuation has to do with the company’s artificial intelligence unit, which is heavily focused on launching orbital data centers that can gobble up significant AI compute market share.

In SpaceX’s registration statement, the company says that Starship’s fully-reusable rocket is designed to carry 100 metric tons to Earth’s orbit “while enabling rapid turnaround times akin to commercial aviation,” with future Starship models designed to double capacity.

The company also expects Starship to begin orbital payload delivery by the second half of this year, with orbital AI compute satellites to be deployed as earlI as 2028. it’s hard to know how close Starship is to getting to this point.

That said, having Starship be so important to the thesis could turn out to be a tailwind if SpaceX proves the bears wrong.

"If this is how the market reacts to a precautionary ​abort, I can't wait to see how it responds to a successful flight," Space Capital CEO Chad Anderson told Reuters, adding that he views the company as a long-term opportunity. "Zoom out and none of this changes the thesis: we're in the early innings of a multi-decade infrastructure cycle, and Starship is the centerpiece."

Anderson may very well be right, but no one can say with certainty whether Starship will work as expected, stick to the company’s timeline, or be able to turnaround missions like a typical airline.

This in my view makes SpaceX stock a big gamble, especially given it’s already massive valuation.

I don’t think it’s bad to take a smaller, more speculative position, given the company’s potential, but I see making the stock a large position as too risky right now.

Bram Berkowitz has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.