Advanced Television

starship

Shotwell: “One Starship launch per month”

Gwynne Shotwell, president and COO of SpaceX, has confirmed that her engineers are building one of the massive Starship ‘super heavy’ rockets per month. She is working to reduce this to a manufacturing rate of two rockets per week. During an interview Shotwell said that Test flight #13 should take place during July, and then […]

June 16, 2026By Chris Forrester

SpaceX forecasts plummeting launch costs

The SpaceX formal presentation linked to its upcoming Initial Public Offering (IPO) says that the once-upon-a-time average rocket launch costs of some $18,500 (€16,006) per kilogram. That cost, says SpaceX, has fallen to a much more appealing $2,700 per kilo thanks to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket fleet. SpaceX says that the Falcon 9 ‘Heavy’ system […]

June 9, 2026By Chris Forrester

SpaceX still targets intercontinental travel

Buried within SpaceX IPO Prospectus issued on May 20th, there’s a paragraph that talks about intercontinental travel using its massive Starship rocket and Continent-to-Continent journeys of perhaps just 30 minutes. Indeed, the prospect of a journey from – say – New York to London, or Los Angeles to Hong Kong or Singapore moving beyond a […]

May 25, 2026

SpaceX’s Starship launch will carry surprises

SpaceX’s giant Starship will probably launch next week, possibly on May 19. SpaceX, in a statement, said that while the primary objective is a successful launch, stage separation and landing in the Gulf of America. But the massive rocket will also carry a few surprises. The first is that this significantly redesigned vehicle’s Upper Stage […]

May 14, 2026

Musk merges SpaceX with xAI

SpaceX and xAI have formally announced that they are merging. A statement from SpaceX Elon Musk said: “SpaceX has acquired xAI to form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform. This marks not just […]

February 3, 2026By Chris Forrester

SpaceX wants 1m extra satellites

SpaceX has filed an ambitious application with the FCC to launch and orbit 1 million new satellites. The filing was dated January 30th. The new fleet, if approved, would orbit at between 500 and 2,000 kms altitude and be spaced 50 kms apart from one another. Each satellite would be equipped with laser links for […]

February 2, 2026By Chris Forrester

Starship Test #11 ready for launch

SpaceX’s massive Starship is set for its latest test flight today [October 13th], its eleventh, in the early evening Texas (CT) time. The mega-rocket is listed to launch at 7:15pm EDT (23.15 GMT) subject to the usual weather and last-minute technical considerations. Flight 11 will be the fifth Starship launch this year. SpaceX hopes to […]

October 13, 2025By Chris Forrester

Starship flight 11 scheduled for October

SpaceX’s next flight of its giant Starship (test flight 11) is likely to launch on October 13th. The date has been confirmed by SpaceX, and the US Coast Guard’s local Notice to Mariners talks of the flight taking place between 6.15pm and 8.22pm on the 13th (US Central Time), but the Coast Guard also lists […]

September 29, 2025By Chris Forrester

Starship business valued at $2.5tn by 2030

A report from ARK Investment Management forecasts that Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship business, which carried out its tenth test flight on August 26th, is likely to be valued at some $2.5 trillion (€2.1tn) by the end of the decade. The rocket’s upper Starship spacecraft, which is designed to one day carry cargo or humans to […]

September 10, 2025

Third time’s a charm for Starship

SpaceX’s massive Starship finally launched at 18.30pm Texas-time on August 26th in a near-flawless test flight. The flight, dubbed #10, pulled off a successful mission after months of explosive mishaps. SpaceX made clear that the Super Heavy booster performed as intended, making a controlled splashdown in the Gulf minutes after liftoff from South Texas. During […]

August 27, 2025By Chris Forrester