Elon Musk 'Highly Confident' Starship V3 Will Achieve 'Full Reusability,' But There's One Catch: 'SpaceX Will Only Try...'

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared that he believes the Starship V3 rocket would achieve full reusability as lunar goals take center stage.

Starship Will Achieve Full Reusability

In a post on the social media platform X on Thursday, Musk quoted a post by SpaceX sharing that the Starship V3 was headed for ground tests. "I am highly confident that the V3 design will achieve full reusability," he said in the post.

He then replied to his own post, outlining that the phenomenon could present challenges. "Should note that SpaceX will only try to catch the ship with the tower after two perfect soft landings in the ocean," he said in his response. Musk added that for SpaceX to try to catch the ship, the risk of the ship "breaking up over land" needed to be "very low."

SpaceX's Shift To The Moon

The commercial space flight company has recently shifted its focus from Mars to missions targeting the Moon's surface, targeting an uncrewed mission to the Lunar surface by 2027. Musk has said that the timelines for missions targeting the Moon are quicker than their Mars-focused counterparts.

The billionaire also recently reaffirmed his goal of building factories on the moon, sharing that Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) will have factories on the moon in 20 years and urging investors to hold on to TSLA stock.

SpaceX recently acquired Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI, with the combined SpaceX-xAI entity valued at $1.25 trillion amid a planned IPO in June this year.

Orbital Datacenter Goals

SpaceX was also recently invited by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to discuss the company’s orbital datacenter goals, which involve operating a fleet of over 1 million satellites. SpaceX is also seeking several waivers from the FCC.

However, Musk’s orbital datacenter goals have been criticized by short seller Jim Chanos, who called the orbital datacenter “AI Snake Oil,” adding that power supply wasn’t the issue.

NASA's Artemis II

It’s worth noting that NASA rolled back the Artemis II launch vehicle from the launch platform at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida after engineers from the agency observed "interrupted flow of helium to the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket’s interim cryogenic propulsion stage."

NASA had previously targeted an early March launch for a Lunar flyby, which would test the vehicle's systems and use that data to develop the lunar landing mission. SpaceX had also outlined its capabilities, positioning Starship as the ideal vehicle to realize America’s Mars and Lunar goals.

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