On an earnings call, not a launch pad, SpaceX confirmed next month it will try to catch both halves of Starship — and told investors how often it plans to fly once it can. On October 10 this was still a hope: Flight 15, maybe four to six weeks out, maybe a ship catch. On Tuesday, October 20, it became a commitment made in front of investors. Opening SpaceX's third-quarter earnings call, Elon Musk put it plainly: "For Flight 15, which we expect to happen next month, we're goin

The next Starship flight is the one where the economics of Mars change forever. Elon Musk has a habit of attaching dates to the future and letting the future negotiate. But what he said Saturday, in a virtual interview at the X Takeover fan event at Giga Texas, deserves to be taken seriously even by the skeptics: Starship Flight 15 is "hopefully" four to six weeks out, and the headline goal is to catch the upper-stage ship with the tower's arms — both stages recovered, both s