SpaceX's plan to fly both Starship stages 30-50 times before retrofit will amortize vehicle costs and is the foundational lever that drives down launch costs.
Andrew Fox explains that SpaceX's goal of reusing both Starship stages dozens of times before retrofit will amortize the vehicle's cost across many flights, which is foundational to the entire bull case for SpaceX's business. ✦ AI generated
Andrew Fox · BG2 Pod · 2026-06-11 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 8:20
“But if we just go to the core business, what do we have to assume goes right in the core business both with launch and with Starlink in order to achieve the numbers that are out there?”
What SpaceX are ultimately trying to achieve is have a Starship fly both stages, not just the booster, 30, 40, 50 times before you have to retrofit that ship. And when you do that, you're amortizing the cost of the vehicle over many flights, right? And that's what brings the cost down significantly.
verbatim transcript · starts at 8:20
8:20Um, and when you do that, you're amortizing the cost of the vehicle over many flights, right? And that's what brings the cost down significantly. Um, >> But that's a really hard problem to solve. >> Extremely difficult and look, I think the company, you know, have been loud and clear, they're going to attempt to bring back the second stage >> Right. >> of Starship later this year. >> Right.
8:43>> Um, and then make it reusable, you know, re-fly the second stage next year. Um, and from there, ramp up the cadence. But at the end of the day, driving down the cost of launch is what enables all of these other businesses and is what makes them so attractive relative to incumbents. >> So how many how many times are we Starship just launched Starship 3, you know, just launched. How many launches
9:09are you know, do you think kind of the consensus out there is assuming, you know, two or three years from now? Like what is the launch cadence? Are we launching one of these every day or we launching one of these every week or every month? Like where are we in terms of expectations? >> Yeah, so look, I think expectations for now, you know, we're going from, you
9:27know, call it 160 165 launches last year up into the high hundreds of launches in several years and, you know, getting into the thousands of launches probably in the next 3 years thereafter. >> Okay. >> Um I think the company have aspirations. >> Thousands of launches, you're launching, you're doing two or three launches a day. >> Right. >> Right. And then talk to us a little bit,
9:48what is this enable? Obviously, you know, I'm here in Silicon Valley. I can't even I can't even keep a call on Sand Hill Road, two decades into the mobile revolution. I mean, it's the craziest thing. It's like a third world. >> It's It's a major business problem when you're freaking out here. [laughter] >> It's crazy. It's crazy. Right by the Starwood dead zone. And I'm like, how
10:08can this possibly be? So almost like it's a joke. It's the epicenter of technology in America and you can't maintain a call. Okay, so we're all going to switch to Starlink mobile when it comes along because I don't want to lose that call on Sand Hill Road. So walk me through a little bit just again high-level. Um it's a big portion of the revenue growth expected in the business