By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON, July 17 (Reuters) - SpaceX is targeting Monday for another attempt to launch its Starship rocket after a last-second abort during engine ignition on Thursday, a brief setback that nevertheless wiped roughly $100 billion from the newly public company's market value.
The company's Starship rocket ignited its engines for a 13th test flight from Texas, but stopped short of lifting off when an automated abort command shut the engines down early. Four of the Starship booster's
33 engines did not ignite, according to a live SpaceX depiction of the booster's engines.
A launch delay for the $15 billion rocket development program better known for dramatic engineering feats and explosive testing failures is not uncommon. Still, SpaceX shares have dropped by roughly 6% to $124.30 since the abort, erasing roughly $100 billion in equity value.
Musk wrote on X that the abort was triggered because "some of the engines didn't start." SpaceX on Friday hoisted the Starship upper stage off its Super Heavy booster and plans to replace two of the booster's Raptor engines "to be confident of a good flight," Musk said, without explaining why some engines didn't start.
"Most probable launch timing is early next week," he added. SpaceX's website said Starship could launch "as early as Monday, July 20."
The share price drop offers an early glimpse into how the newly public company's investors might judge the progress of a high-tech rocket program on which SpaceX's most lofty ambitions rely.
The stock had already been sliding from a post-IPO high of $225.64 and fell below SpaceX's $135 IPO price on Wednesday. The abort accelerated the decline.
"If this is how the market reacts to a precautionary abort, I can't wait to see how it responds to a successful flight," Chad Anderson, CEO of Space Capital and a SpaceX investor since 2017, said via text message.
"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," he added. "Day-to-day price action is noise against the backdrop. This is a long-term opportunity."
Some SpaceX employees on X, which is owned by SpaceX, sought to explain the abort and delay to next week.
Director of Starship engineering Shana Diez said on X that the Thursday launch scrub was the first time a fully stacked Starship rocket lit its engines and then aborted.
"While similar to a wet dress rehearsal," she said, referring to a practice run of a rocket launch, "there is a lot going on and any first time operation comes with additional risk."
"This is how we learn safely and implement mitigations for all scenarios," said Jessie Anderson, a Starship production engineer who sometimes hosts the company's launch live streams.
PRESSURE RISING
SpaceX has launched 12 Starship test flights since 2023, some ending in explosive failures and other hard testing setbacks that have become hallmarks of SpaceX's test-to-failure development ethos, a risky and capital-intensive approach that has been key to the company's quick growth.
But the pressure is rising for Starship to begin operational flights after nearly a decade in development and over $15 billion spent so far.
Two pillars of SpaceX's future growth hinge on Starship: expanding the Starlink network to beam service directly to mobile devices and eventually launching thousands to potentially a million AI-processing satellites into space.
SpaceX aims to launch the first Starlink satellites to orbit on Starship by year's end, followed by routine launches, the company said in its prospectus.
Starship will carry 20 Starlink satellites on its 13th flight test to demonstrate its satellite-dispensing system and the Starlink network's laser communication links, but those satellites will follow the ship's suborbital trajectory and burn up in Earth's atmosphere soon after deployment.
The rocket will launch out of Florida for the first time "potentially" by year's end, SpaceX engineer Kate Tice said Thursday on the Starship live stream.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
