SpaceX’s Starship rocket entered orbit for the first time Monday, deploying Starlink satellites before returning to Earth, a landmark achievement that nevertheless saw the rocket maker’s stock fall.
Starship is slated to replace SpaceX’s reusable workhorse, the Falcon 9, which has allowed the Elon Musk-owned company to achieve a lucrative near-monopoly on satellite launches.
Starship is the “linchpin of SpaceX’s grand vision,” Scientific American wrote, with economics that are reliant on “entering orbit, deploying payloads, surviving reentry, making pinpoint landings and achieving smooth recoveries” time after time without issue.
Some investors remain leery of the firm’s titanic AI and rocket ambitions, as well as its towering $2 trillion valuation.