Gwynne Shotwell: Starship flight 13 in about a month, flights monthly thereafter
According to a short clip from an interview with SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell earlier this week, she stated the company expects to fly the next Superheavy/Starship mission, #13, in about a month, and will then begin monthly test flight thereafter.
Full orbital flights should begin with #14, “and then from there on out.”
She also expressed certainty about an operational Starship in orbit before the end of the year. That likely includes a deployment of Starlink satellites, as well as a likely refueling test mission involving two Starships. In an October 2025 Starship update SpaceX described this mission, noting it was targeting a late 2026 launch:
It will start with a Starship launched from Starbase to spend an extended time on orbit, gathering data on vehicle propulsion and thermal behavior on an extended duration mission, including long duration propellant storage and boil-off characterization. A second Starship will then launch to rendezvous with the first to demonstrate ship-to-ship propellant transfer in Earth orbit.
All the evidence continues to suggest the company is going to meet this schedule, or only miss it by a few months at most.
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If SpaceX misses by a couple months, the naysayers will stilll call it a failure.
The changes coming to space are going to take longer than expected but be more profound than anyone can image. It would be like explaining mobile phone internet to someone using 300 baud dialup
Joe wrote, “The changes coming to space are going to take longer than expected but be more profound than anyone can imag[ine].”
Sorry, but I have made my living for almost four decades predicting such profound things. My problem is impatience. It is taking too long. I want to see it before my time is up.
This is why I advocate for Horizontal Take Off/Horizontal Landing (HTOHL) space-planes, Two Stage To Orbit (TSTO) system in that you don’t need a true pad…. maybe a sled at best.
This way, the exhaust products flow along the Earth surface…not into it.
The gouts of flame can be as long as they like.
Once the systems are proven, then stand the bloody thing up and omit the wings.
The military might have been more willing to help fund a giant Dawn type system.
Boostback is fine for Falcon….but something as complex as Starship?
I want a pilot in that who could glide back even if all the bloody Raptors burned out.
The SSME’s were perfected over a hundred launches.
A winged system can avoid slosh.
I wonder if a winged SH with more fuel could take off from a Boca strip -cheaper than that pad –then land in Florida.
Gentle arc….up and over …nice and easy.
Something that big and complex deserves to be baby-ed.
It still doesn’t sit well with me that Dragon is as automated as Vostok.
I guess I have been reading Tom Wolfe too much. Engineers got too much abuse….but I am warming up to pilot culture.
Between drones and boostback, I fear the loss of good stick and rudder men.
I wonder if the recent loss of the B-52 might have been a result.
You don’t rotate the nose on that ..you crab into the air FLAT.
But it is muscle memory to pull back on the yoke….which you do on most planes.
I might have B-52 pilots practice tail-draggers right before B-52 assignments, to help break them.
Tail draggers demand a brief FORWARD stick to get level…then pull up.
You and Gerry Anderson – and the producers of When Worlds Collide – for that giant HTOHL vintage sci-fi goodness.
You can keep hoping, but I don’t see it ever happening.
I will say this—if a HTOHL leaves behind a rock-tornado gouge in the Earth, it’d have to be as a nuclear salt water rocket.
Ms. Shotwell is reputed to be a very sharp lady, so I am sure she realizes that with SpaceX going public, her visibility and credibility are now much more consequential.
Above all, she must avoid the signature flaw that her mentor could not: a reputation for overly-optimistic forecast timelines!