SpaceX’s Starship mega rocket performs a test flight from Starbase, Texas, on Monday, September 28, 2026. Starship is the largest rocket ever built, but it cannot yet carry astronauts. Eric Gay/AP hide title toggle title i Eric Gay/AP Later today, SpaceX is planning the most ambitious test yet of its massive new Starship rocket. If all goes well, it will take off from a pad in southern Texas, circle Earth, and then land vertically on the same pad 22 and a half hours later. The test would be a major milestone for a rocket that company founder Elon Musk says he hopes will one day carry astronauts to Mars. But experts say Starship’s rapid development could also end up stranding one of the company’s biggest boosters over the years: NASA. That’s because as SpaceX improves its new rocket, it has said it will stop flying a much smaller one called Falcon 9. Falcon 9 launches the company’s Dragon capsule, which is currently the only American spacecraft capable of transporting NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station. “Because Dragon has become such a successful and reliable vehicle, it became the de facto way for astronauts to reach orbit,” said Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space, a firm that tracks the space industry. According to a NASA announcement in September, the space agency has contracted SpaceX for three additional flights to the International Space Station. That would only allow Dragon to fly until 2028, assuming the missions were flown consecutively in six-month increments and no further flights were contracted with SpaceX. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has compared the Dragon Capsule to a minivan. “The road trip to Mars is six months, so you don’t want to be in the minivan,” he said. “We definitely want to move from older technology to newer technology.” TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption i TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images “NASA and SpaceX continue to work closely on numerous missions and contractual agreements, including transporting crew and cargo to the International Space Station,” the space agency said in an email statement to NPR. “As the commercial space industry evolves, so will the technologies and services available to NASA.” The space station is currently scheduled to retire in 2030. ‘I love you guys’ The current problem facing the space agency marks a marked change from previous times, when it was SpaceX that relied heavily on NASA. In 2008, after multiple failures of the Falcon 9, the space launch company was on the ropes. “At that point we were exhausted, we had practically no money,” Elon Musk told CBS’s 60 Minutes in a 2014 interview. Then, just days before Christmas, NASA signed a big contract. “I couldn’t even hold the phone, I just blurted out, ‘I love you guys!'” Musk said. Over the next decade, a steady diet of NASA and, eventually, Pentagon contracts were responsible for a large portion of the company’s revenue. But that all changed in 2020, when SpaceX launched a subscription satellite internet service called Starlink. Starlink subscriptions quickly eclipsed the money made from rocket launches. NASA SpaceX Crew-13 crew members (LR), CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, NASA astronauts Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov depart the Neil A. Armstrong Pay and Operations Building prior to launch at the Kennedy Space Center October 1, 2026 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. SpaceX is currently the primary trip for NASA astronauts trying to reach the ISS. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America hide title toggle title i Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America Today, according to SpaceX’s latest financial report, the company earned around $2.1 billion in revenue from space launches through September of this year. By contrast, Starlink raised around $12.8 billion, while its rapidly growing AI business earned around $10.9 billion. The closure of Falcon Starship is critical to SpaceX’s newest and largest businesses. The space launch company is already using it to launch its powerful new V3 satellites for Starlink into orbit. Later, Musk has said he wants the rocket to carry data centers into space. “Once Starship is flying reliably several times a week, it makes sense to shift SpaceX’s scarce engineering and production resources to Starship to achieve launch velocity several times a day, which means shutting down Falcon,” Musk said on X earlier this year. “We definitely want to move from older technology to newer technology,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said at the All In summit in Los Angeles in September. “A Falcon 9 with a Dragon capsule on top is like a minivan… The road trip to Mars is six months, so you don’t want to be in the minivan.” The problem is that the minivan is perfect for taking astronauts on a short ride to the space station. In fact, it is currently the only American option to make the trip. Henry said building space capsules is time-consuming and expensive. And it turns out that NASA is the only one willing to pay, which makes it a very small market for a company like the one SpaceX has become. “There is no strong commercial market for human spaceflight today,” he said. Launch Gap The retirement of the Falcon rocket will have enormous impacts beyond human spaceflight. A recent analysis by Quilty Space concludes that the commercial market may fall short by about 150 launches between now and 2030, and the Pentagon has reportedly been left scrambling to find rides for national security satellites. In a statement to NPR, the US Space Force said it had secured Falcon 9 launches through 2028 and was “confident” other suppliers could take over. None of that is likely to change SpaceX’s mind, according to Tim Farrar, president of TMF Associates, a telecommunications analytics firm that tracks SpaceX. The company has grown far beyond its launch business, he said. “SpaceX now has a lot to do.” In particular, “he’s not making a lot of money with NASA,” he said. “While it seems likely that individual missions will be profitable, they are small things.” It is still unclear when SpaceX will retire the Falcon 9 rocket. The company did not respond to NPR’s request for comment, but in his public comments at the summit, Shotwell hinted that a rival company, Boeing, could fly to the station instead. “I think Boeing has been paid probably more than we have been paid to develop their human capsule. So we’ll just let them do some business,” he said. “They should blow up their capsule.” Boeing’s capsule, known as Starliner, has been plagued with problems throughout its development. In 2024, failures in the vehicle’s first attempt to carry astronauts into space resulted in a planned eight-day mission aboard the ISS turning into a nine-month stay. The astronauts returned home in a SpaceX vehicle in March of the following year. The next Starliner test flight will take place over the winter, with a crewed flight sometime in 2028. For Farrar, SpaceX’s choices make sense for its business, but he questions whether NASA deserves better. “They were essentially responsible for SpaceX not going bankrupt,” he said. “You would hope there would be a little bit of loyalty.”
