#12
When will Starship be fully and rapidly reusable?
Interviews
9
Answers
12
X posts
12
Span
2024 to 2026
First asked Mar 25, 2024, most recently Oct 10, 2026. Excerpts below are from machine transcripts with filler words (um, uh, you know) and stutters removed; … marks a cut. They are not checked word for word, so use the link to hear the exact words, or the transcript link for the raw text. Timestamps: 6 cross-checked against YouTube captions, 6 from the archive transcript only. X has no link-to-time option, so X links open at the start.
How the answer evolved · oldest first
Mar 25, 2024 · Abundance360 Summit · asked by Peter Diamandis
Q: fuel you said for starship flight would be how much?
Yeah, the, I mean if both are reusable and with, without refurbishment, then you, or without you've had scheduled maintenance just like an aircraft. But if you get to full reusability where there's no work required between flights, then you, then the cost is really, the cost of propellant is maybe a million dollars or less per flight. So then it's. Number of flights. Orders of magnitude better than any vehicle.
Jun 22, 2024 · First Look Inside SpaceX's Starfactory with Elon Musk · asked by Tim Dodd
Q: So I think time will tell that you can just keep chipping away at all those little improvements. So do you think you actually fly?
Falcon 9 used to have reusability measured in months, then weeks, then days. But for Falcon 9, the architecture is limited to. You really can't compress it down less than several days when you take the landing out to sea. And then the necessary refurbishment of the booster, that is required. So with Starship, we'll take it from days to hours. Wow. Do you think? Yeah. And then. Yeah, so then the ship has to go around …
Jul 13, 2024 · X Takeover 2024 · asked by John (Tesla Owners Silicon Valley)
Q: Or what is success for you and SpaceX in this next Starship 5 launch?
Well, we would like to catch the Mecha, the booster in the giant Mechazilla arms which sounds kind of insane and because this is the largest flying object ever made. So to catch it with giant robot arms is pluck it out of the sky is pretty insane. But I think it's got a decent chance of working. Might take a few kicks at the can before it's actually before it works well, but we're not breaking physics so success is …
Jul 13, 2024 · X Takeover 2024 · asked by Kelvin (Tesla Owners Silicon Valley)
Q: All right, Elon, we want to wrap up with final question for you, which is what are you most excited excited about regarding Tesla and Space X?
Well, I think I've basically described it already, but the key for Space X is to achieve full and rapid reusability of the starship rocket. This is really the holy grail of space technology. No one has ever made a fully reusable orbital rocket. So Starship is the first design that is even capable of that. This is an absolutely profound thing because a fully reusable, rapidly reusable rocket is the difference between …
Feb 28, 2025 · The Joe Rogan Experience · asked by Joe Rogan
Q: What's like the ultimate expression of rocket technology? Like what, what comes after this?
Well, I mean, the fundamental breakthrough we're aiming for at SpaceX is a fully and rapidly reusable orbital rocket where both stages are fully and rapidly reusable. With our Falcon rocket, we are able to reuse the main stage and the nose cone. But we're not able to reuse the upper stage. And it still takes us at least a few days from when the main stage lands to when we can fly it again. So it's not fully reusable …
Feb 28, 2025 · The Joe Rogan Experience · asked by Joe Rogan
Q: So what has to improve in order to make it reusable?
Well, There's some like, we're pretty close to being able to rapidly reuse the booster for starship. That's why it comes back and gets caught by the arms, and then the arms place it back in the launch mount. So now there's still we have a little bit of engine damage, we got a little bit of heat shield damage. There's like tweaks that are needed, but we're pretty close to achieving full and rapid reusability of the …
Feb 28, 2025 · The Joe Rogan Experience · asked by Joe Rogan
Q: And what needs to improve in order to make it reusable? What's wrong with it?
Right now on the ship side, the toughest problem is the heat shield. So no one has ever developed a fully reusable orbital heat shield, because when you come in from orbital velocity, you come in like a flaming meteor, like you're just a raging ball of fire. And it's hard to have a heat shield that doesn't partially melt or get destroyed in that process. That wasn't a problem we were able to solve with Falcon 9. …
Sep 7, 2025 · All-In Summit · asked by Host
Q: Are there some showstoppers where you're just kind of literally just obsessing over trying to figure out still, or is it more about getting through laundry list of your learnings and just integrating it into the next launch?
For full reusability of the ship, there's still a lot of work that remains on the heat shield. So no one's ever made a fully reusable orbital heat shield like the shuttle heat shield had to go through nine months of repair after every flight. Right. So no one has ever made a fully reusable orbital heat shield.
Jan 22, 2026 · Davos · asked by Larry Fink
Q: That's a rocket that you're using for the idea of going to Mars, right?
Yeah, Mars and the moon as well as for high volume satellite stuff. So Starship, hopefully this year we should prove full reusability for Starship, which will be a profound invention because the cost of access to space will drop by a factor of 100 when you achieve full reusability.
Jun 8, 2026 · SpaceX Technical Talk: AI Satellites at Scale · asked by Moderator
Q: What's kind of what Starship's kind of purpose of being, what is it going to be doing?
Yeah, so Starship is going to, it's going to revolutionize space really. It's the first rocket design that is capable of full and rapid reusability. Now reusability is the fundamental breakthrough that is necessary to make life multi planetary as well as to ascend the Kardashev scale. You simply cannot ascend the Kardashev scale unless you have a reusable spacecraft. And you cannot extend life to the moon, to Mars …
Sep 15, 2026 · All-In Podcast: Elon Musk & Gwynne Shotwell on AI risks, Starship, Terafab and a SpaceX/Tesla merger · asked by Jason Calacanis
Q: How many have gone up so far and how close are you?
Well, We've got flights 14 coming up of Starship and this will be the last flight before we attempt to catch the ship. So if this flight goes well, then on flight 15 we will try to catch the ship. And then either end of this year or more likely early next, we will refly the ship and refly the booster. So we have reflown the booster already, but we've not caught the ship with the tower arms, nor have we reflown the …
Oct 10, 2026 · X Takeover 2026 · asked by Host (Tesla Owners Silicon Valley)
Q: Once you catch the starship for the first time, what is the next big goal after that?
Well, the next big milestone would be to re fly both the booster and the ship. So the next upcoming milestone would be the first time in history that all parts of an orbital rocket have been recovered. But then the flight after that hopefully will be the first time that all parts of an orbital rocket are reflown. And then there's a long tail of engineering and production work and work on the launch system and …
In his own posts on X
@elonmusk · Nov 7, 2024
Starship is now more than twice as powerful as the Saturn V Moon rocket and, in a year or so, it will be three times as powerful at 10,000 metric tons of thrust. More importantly, it is designed to be fully reusable, burning ~80% liquid oxygen and ~20% liquid methane (very low cost propellant). This enables cost per ton to orbital space to be ~10,000% lower than Saturn V. Starship is the difference between being a multiplanet or single planet civilization. Building a new world on Mars is now possible.
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Feb 28, 2025
There is a good chance of achieving full reusability of Starship this year. Full and immediate reflight of Starship, along with orbital refilling, probably happens next year. This is the fundamental breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary. https://t.co/HVtCd9EHKk
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Mar 22, 2025
We are honing in on the V3 Starship design. @SpaceX is tracking to a Starship launch rate of once a week in ~12 months. That will yield ~100 tons to @Starlink orbit with full reusability. Profound breakthrough. https://t.co/FvYmlTN2QI
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Aug 22, 2025
Making a fully reusable orbital rocket of any design is one of the hardest engineering problems of all time. Much, much harder than going to the Moon, which is why it still hasn’t been solved. I am cautiously optimistic that Starship will achieve full reusability next year. The other critical technology, albeit much easier, is orbital refilling. If fortune favors us, that will also be achieved next year. Then consciousness and life as we know it can extend to the planets and hence to the stars.
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Feb 26, 2026
Starship V3 SN1 headed for ground tests. I am highly confident that the V3 design will achieve full reusability. https://t.co/P3XS1pBeZd
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Feb 26, 2026
Should note that SpaceX will only try to catch the ship with the tower after two perfect soft landings in the ocean. The risk of the ship breaking up over land needs to be very low.
View on X ↗@elonmusk · May 12, 2026
High-cycle, reliable engine reflight without replacement, refurbishment or laborious inspection is about the same degree of difficulty as a rapidly reusable heat shield. And then there are thousands of smaller challenges throughout the primary structure. This is a crazy hard problem.
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Jul 24, 2026
@DJSnM Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on next flight
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Jul 29, 2026
@wintonARK The cost would drop well below $100/kg to orbit for Starship if it achieves immediate & complete reusability, with local production of liquid CH4 & O2
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Aug 7, 2026
@SpaceX @gleesonjm Unfortunately, ship recovery is not looking good right now. Nonetheless, we were able to obtain close-up photos of critical regions of the heat shield and engines for future upgrades.
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Aug 20, 2026
Looks like we will probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months. If there had been a tower out to sea where we practiced landing the ship, it would have been caught. First reflight of the ship will be either end of this year or early next. That will be a fork in the road of history for consciousness reaching the stars.
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Oct 13, 2026
Starship 40’s return to base https://t.co/ZvGseVTJly
View on X ↗
Legend: Timestamp cross-checked; Timestamp from archive, not cross-checked; Unverified: caption-only timestamp; Timestamp checked against our transcript of the X replay; Unverified timestamp: from archive transcript, not checked against the X video. Report an error →