Technology May 18, 2026 · 1 min read

The US space enterprise is desperately waiting for Starship—will it finally deliver?

"This is such a wild ride. The highs are high. The lows are low."

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Ars Technica
by Eric Berger
The US space enterprise is desperately waiting for Starship—will it finally deliver?

These days, one would be forgiven for forgetting that SpaceX is, at its core, a rocket company.

Consider the company's mega deals over the last year. SpaceX paid $17 billion—more than it has spent developing every one of its rockets—to EchoStar for wireless spectrum to boost its Starlink network. It revealed plans to launch 1 million orbital data centers. SpaceX merged with xAI in a deal that valued Elon Musk's artificial intelligence firm at $250 billion, and it announced plans to become a major computer chip manufacturer. And earlier this month, SpaceX sold an enormous amount of ground-based compute to Anthropic.

As a result of all this activity, an impending IPO will value the company at something like $1.5 or $2 trillion. That's trillion, with a t.

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This article was originally published by Ars Technica and written by Eric Berger .

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