Shotwell makes TIME front cover
March 30, 2026
Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s President & COO, is TIME magazine’s April 2026 front cover personality, and has delivered some valuable insights into SpaceX’s plans and expectations for Starlink and the company’s other divisions. However, she politely declined to say anything about the SpaceX Initial Public Offering (IPO).
Some of her comments within the magazine were perhaps surprising. For example, Starlink’s current fleet of more than 10,000 satellites – and serving more than 10 million customers – will continue to grow but only to 15,000-20,000 craft. The separate FCC filings for 15,000 direct-to-cellular Version 3 Starlinks will go ahead as will the FCC application for 1 million orbiting data centres. Indeed, she said, she was surprised the 1 million announcement got such little news. “I don’t know that we’ll get to a million, but it’s much easier to ask at the beginning and then march towards the goal.”
As to the Starlink customer base, she explained that strong growth was still expected. In conflict zones (such as Ukraine, Iran, Gaza), Starlink operates as a licensed commercial service.
She expected the launch cadence for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets to slow a little (140-145 launches this year, compared to 165 launches last year) but would be replaced by Starship. Starship would carry heavy payloads such as SpaceX’s AI craft and that the company was still looking at human transport capability. “It depends on where you’re going, but I’ve heard up to 300 passengers a vehicle,” she said.
Shotwell anticipated humans on the Moon’s surface before 2030 with a landing by 2028 “though much must go right”.
She also anticipated robotic construction taking place on the Moon, noting: “I think Elon has talked about like a million people to sustain a civilization on another heavenly body. If Starship can take 50 to 100 at a time to the moon—if we can’t do it in 10 years, that would be a shame. We will probably have robots to start, you know, helping build this manufacturing capability, and then people go live there. I want to go to the moon. I don’t love camping, right? But I would love to go to the moon.”
For the upcoming IPO, she was coy, commenting: “I’m not really supposed to talk about the IPO in any way, but I’m actually looking forward to it. It’s a new thing, kind of a new set of methodologies to run companies. So I’m excited about it.”
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