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On Friday, Nov. 13, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:SPCX) will try to catch both stages of an orbital rocket -- the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage -- with the arms of its launch tower in Starbase, Texas.
Wall Street is treating Starship Flight 15 like a major event for the stock -- and it is. Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) analyst Adam Jonas called a successful Starship catch potentially "the biggest positive catalyst since the IPO" for the company. Elon Musk said on the company's October earnings call that success was "more likely than not." We'll see if that prediction holds up on Friday.
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So, here's what you need to know ahead of the big launch.
After the rocket takes flight sometime after 5:45 p.m. ET, the two stages will separate with Starship headed into orbit and the booster returning to Starbase 6.5 minutes after liftoff for the first catch. Meanwhile, Starship will begin circling the Earth, orbiting the globe 14 times over more than 22 hours while it deploys 26 of SpaceX's Starlink V3 -- its newest generation -- satellites. Starship then makes its reentry and heads back for its own catch attempt on Saturday.
SpaceX has successfully caught the booster three times before, but never Starship. The critical upper stage comes back from orbit much faster and from much farther away. That makes things a whole lot trickier, as you can imagine. If anything looks off, SpaceX can abort and divert Starship to the ocean.
SpaceX's current workhorse, Falcon 9, already reuses its booster, but it throws away its upper stage on every flight. That's what makes Starship so important: full reusability makes space launch dramatically cheaper.
Starship only reached orbit for the first time this September during Flight 14, and an engine problem led SpaceX to cut the planned 10-hour mission to about three hours. On top of that, despite plenty of success with earlier versions, the company's latest V3 boosters haven't been caught yet either. Two before Flight 14 ended in hard landings, and Flight 14's booster splashed down in the ocean. So clearly, catching both stages on the same flight would be a massive leap forward, but is far from guaranteed, despite Musk's optimism.
In its latest quarter, SpaceX hit $14.6 billion in overall sales for the whole company. Its launch business brought in $1.8 billion of that. So why is Starship so important?
Well, first, understand that the launch business doesn't book revenue from sending up SpaceX's own Starlink satellites, so the lackluster top-line for the segment is a bit misleading. Right now, Starship would accelerate deployment of the Starlink satellite network, which means growth overall. It would also help reduce the marginal cost of that growth and improve the company's bottom line.
And in the longer term, as the program scales and Starlink deployment moves toward a more steady state, Starship will allow SpaceX to sell more capacity to more clients and grow the launch segment's own top-line.
Catching both stages on Friday would be a big step toward making this a reality. Of course, another failure could signal this future is much further off than investors would like.
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Johnny Rice has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Space Exploration Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Nov 13 Could Be A Huge Day For SpaceX Stock was originally published by The Motley Fool
