SpaceX's Starship Countdown Meets Wall Street's Patience Test

SpaceX's Falcon cadence continues as NASA adds $946 million for three crewed ISS missions, while Starship Flight 14 waits on FAA approval.

Rocket launches have become so routine at SpaceX that the company's 700th Falcon flight barely registered as a headline. On September 13, the vehicle carried the final three O3b mPOWER satellites into orbit for SES — a milestone that once would have dominated industry news, now folded into a steady cadence more reminiscent of automotive production than of the state monopolies that once defined spaceflight.

That rhythm continued without pause. Twenty-seven Starlink satellites lifted off from the California coast on September 19, followed by a classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from the West Coast. Low Earth orbit, in other words, has shed its status as a research curiosity and hardened into economic and strategic infrastructure. The question for investors is no longer whether SpaceX can fly — it is how much of that operational excellence is already baked into the share price.

NASA Deepens Its Bet as Starship Waits on Regulators

Institutional backing offers one answer. Reuters reported a contract modification with NASA worth $946 million covering three additional crewed missions to the International Space Station. The change lifts the total value of the agreement to $5.92 billion across 17 flights, locking in SpaceX's operational role through 2030. A further crewed flight for NASA, Crew-13, is already scheduled for the coming Thursday.

The next growth chapter, however, hinges on hardware that has yet to leave the ground. At the Starbase facility in Texas, the upper-stage Ship 41 was stacked atop Booster B21 on Wednesday, and a wet dress rehearsal — the critical fueling test — wrapped up successfully on Thursday. Technically, Starship Flight 14 appears ready, with a 75-minute launch window opening at 8:15 a.m. Eastern Time on September 28.

What stands between the rocket and orbit is not engineering but paperwork. The Federal Aviation Administration must grant its approval before the engines can ignite, leaving the world's largest rocket in a regulatory holding pattern. That limbo captures the company's central tension: operational ambition running up against bureaucratic review. Delays of this kind tie up substantial resources, a drag investors would be wise not to dismiss.

Valuation Gap: 33% Below the Peak

Market watchers, meanwhile, continue to outdo one another with bullish scenarios, including price targets as high as $450. The valuation metrics counsel a cooler head. SpaceX trades at a market capitalization equivalent to €1,715.12 billion, with the stock closing at €130.36 on Friday. That leaves the shares 33% below their 52-week high.

The distance between daily reality and the most optimistic targets is striking. A $450 objective assumes new business models and Starship capacity click into place almost without friction — an assumption that spaceflight, which rarely forgives a first-attempt error, does not easily accommodate.

Falcon Pays the Bills While Starship Spends Them

The company's ability to reach these valuation heights at all rests on its workhorse program. Falcon reliably churns through contracts: the 700th flight carried three SES satellites on September 13, a U.S. Space Force payload followed on September 16, and 27 Starlink satellites went up on September 19. This core business delivers dependable revenue and demonstrates industrial maturity, underwriting the expensive development programs running alongside it.

Classic capital-market factors are now competing for attention with the technical risks inherent to any flight test. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and COO, filed a Form 144 with the SEC through Morgan Stanley, outlining the sale of 342,170 Class A common shares on the open market — a stake worth roughly $51.96 million. Transactions of this kind by senior executives, combined with post-IPO lock-up expirations, swell the supply of shares and weigh on near-term sentiment.

A Fork in the Road

SpaceX sits at a junction. The proven Falcon business is executing to plan and forms the stable backbone of its multi-billion valuation, while the real upside depends on scaling Starship. For now, the odds of long-term dominance in the space sector outweigh the risks — but setbacks and regulatory delays are likely to inject volatility along the way. Anyone betting on those ambitious price targets will need patience until the technical and regulatory milestones are actually cleared.