SpaceX spends big on Starship to lead space race

SpaceX has spent more than $15 billion developing its next-generation Starship rocket, according to the company’s IPO registration reviewed by Reuters, News.Az reports.

The figure far exceeds the cost of its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, as the company approaches a decade-long effort to perfect a fully reusable launch system designed to operate more like commercial aviation.

The future of SpaceX’s most profitable businesses, as it moves toward public markets with a reported $1.75 trillion valuation, is closely tied to Starship.

The towering two-stage rocket is central to ambitions outlined by Elon Musk, including launching larger batches of Starlink satellites, transporting humans to the Moon and Mars, and eventually deploying thousands of artificial intelligence computing satellites as an alternative to energy-intensive data centers on Earth.

The $15 billion investment—previously unreported—dwarfs the approximately $400 million SpaceX spent developing Falcon 9, currently the world’s most frequently launched rocket. Falcon 9 has been the backbone of SpaceX’s commercial success, enabling rapid Starlink deployment and giving the company a significant lead over competitors in the launch market.

In its confidential IPO filing, SpaceX said it has “continued to invest significantly” to expand its technological lead by pursuing full and rapid reusability at scale, noting that more than $15 billion has been directed toward the Starship program.

The company plans to begin launching its next-generation Starlink satellites, known as V3, in the second half of 2026. These missions are expected to rely on Starship, whose payload bay has been specifically designed for the upgraded satellites and can carry up to 60 units per launch, according to the filing.

This marks a substantial increase compared to the roughly two dozen smaller Starlink satellites typically carried by Falcon 9, highlighting how closely Starship’s success is tied to the economics of the Starlink network.

Starship now accounts for the majority of SpaceX’s development spending. The company allocated $3 billion to research and development for its space segment in 2025, all of which was directed toward Starship, according to the filing. This represents a sharp rise from the $1.8 billion spent on that segment the previous year, underscoring how fundamentally different Starship is from Falcon rockets and other launch systems developed to date.

News.Az 

By Nijat Babayev