Starship Flight 10: Will SpaceX really be ready in three weeks?

This week Elon Musk shared his patented vague timeline announcements for future Starship launches, “launching again in ~3 weeks.” Can SpaceX do it after Ship 36’s and Massey’s destruction? When will Starship Flight 10 actually fly?

Last month, SpaceX suffered a massive setback to its Starship program, its third one of the year, when the Starship upper stage Ship 36 exploded on a test stand. The vehicle was mostly complete and was just finishing up some final tests before SpaceX could begin getting approval from the FAA to launch Starship again.

However, that test failure was thought to have set back SpaceX several months before launching Starship Flight 10. Massey’s, a former gun range SpaceX purchased to use as a more remote test site near Starbase, has been out of commission since Ship 36’s demise. While work continues on getting the site cleaned up and repaired, no Ship or Booster tests are expected to take place there for the time being.

Massey does three important tests for Starship launches there: booster cryogenic proofing, ship cryogenic proofing, and ship static fires. Thankfully for SpaceX, Booster 16, the expected Starship Flight 10 booster, was already successfully cryo-proofed prior to the destruction of the site, so it’s cleared for flight.

Advertisement - scroll for more content

While Ship 37, the new candidate for Flight 10, was cryo-proofed at Massey’s back in May, it has not yet been static fired. SpaceX also usually runs through a whole host of tests on the upper stage prior to launch at Massey’s; these will need to be done somewhere else if SpaceX is to launch as quickly as Elon believes they will.

SpaceX has begun to modify a Starship transport stand it uses to move its rockets around Starbase for use as an adapter for Starship upper stages to static fire directly on the launch mounts. This would give Starships a safe place to fire up its six engines without concern of damaging themselves or the surrounding area on a lower test stand like SpaceX used before Massey’s.

For when Starship Flight 10 can launch, Elon’s timelines are usually not that accurate; although his stating a three-week potential launch date is a good sign that things are moving in the right direction. SpaceX will still need to work through FAA approval for launch, get Ship 37 completed and static fired, and then do full stack tests and dress rehearsals before launching.

Space Explored’s Take

Prior to Elon’s post on X this week, I was working on a story about whether Starship’s development has stalled. While still potentially a thought worth discussing, Elon’s post, no matter how wrong he’s been in the past, shows that at least another launch is not months away from their end.

Starship has been in a bit of a rough spot so far this year. 2025 was supposed to be the year of Starship’s increased launch cadence and moving the rocket closer to operational use with orbital missions, Starship deployments, and progress towards its Artemis launch lander milestones.

However, what we’ve seen so far is that SpaceX is potentially much further from getting Starship ready for operational flights than we thought. Starship Block 2 was supposed to be more reliable; however, it has been nothing of the sort.

Before anyone asks about the boosters being reliable, that should be expected as SpaceX has been launching rockets for decades. The upper stage is where Starship really switches from being just another massive rocket to something revolutionary. It was never going to be easy, but we may have taken Elon a little too much at face value with the Block 2 improvements.

Will Starship launch in three weeks? Unlikely, but I would expect that in three weeks we will see most of the requirements for launch cleared out, and the talk will be about FAA approvals and final details rather than whether SpaceX will have a rocket ready or not.