It's valued at close to $140 billion, making it one of the biggest private companies in the country. QUILTY: Until Starship is flying and the development costs are down and it's generating revenue instead of consuming cash and until, you know, they start getting new Starlink satellites on orbit, you know, I think it's - it'll be a challenge for him.īRUMFIEL: That would be a problem for most space companies, but SpaceX is different. But Quilty and other analysts believe Starship and Starlink will keep it in the red for a while. SpaceX does make money launching commercial and government satellites on its existing rockets. But most analysts agree between launching thousands of satellites to blanket the Earth with internet service and preparing for a visit to Mars, it's losing money.ĬHRIS QUILTY: It's hard to imagine how they could be generating cash with those level investments.īRUMFIEL: Chris Quilty is president of Quilty Space, a company that tracks the space industry.

SpaceX is a private company, so its finances aren't known. SpaceX is also building a costly satellite internet service called Starlink. And it's not the company's only big project. And that means that we have a real path here to get humanity to Mars.īRUMFIEL: But making humans an interplanetary species in this economy - that's a lot for SpaceX to take on. MUSK: We're going to solve the issues that are remaining, and we'll get it to orbit, and we'll make it reusable. His longtime dream is that it will travel to Mars. Musk says SpaceX will spend $2 billion on Starship this year alone. It wasn't supposed to work on the first try.

Starship is an innovative design, the biggest rocket ever built. But SpaceX's employees didn't seem to mind, nor did the company's founder, Elon Musk.ĮLON MUSK: The outcome was roughly what I expected.īRUMFIEL: That was Musk speaking on Twitter recently about the flight test. (SOUNDBITE OF ROCKET THRUSTERS BELLOWING)īRUMFIEL: They kept cheering as the massive rocket pulverized the concrete under its launch pad, as one of its engines appeared to explode on the way up and even when it began to somersault out of control and disintegrate over the Gulf of Mexico.īRUMFIEL: None of that was supposed to happen.

Starship by Editorial Planeta S.A.U.