Countdown for the 13th test flight of the starship! The key flight is pulling on SpaceX's space ambitions and trillion-dollar valuation.

After abandoning launch attempts last week, SpaceX (SPCX.US) will attempt an important test of its giant Starship rocket on Thursday. This event will bring investors face-to-face with the risks of the company's tumultuous development cycle and further raise the profile of this key milestone. The launch is scheduled for 5:45 p.m. local time from SpaceX's Starship base in southern Texas, USA. This will be the second flight test of the latest version of the rocket, known as the third version (V3). The rocket will carry upgraded Starlink satellites into space, which will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up after the test mission. Starship is at the core of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's ambitious goals, including deploying data centers in space, expanding the Starlink communication network, and sending humans to the moon and Mars. However, the development path of the project has been unstable, experiencing explosive accidents, equipment failures, and multiple delays. This Starship flight test is the 13th flight of the rocket and the first flight test since SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history in June. The Starship 13th flight scheduled for last Thursday was aborted due to an engine ignition failure in the last second before liftoff - 33 Raptor engines at the bottom of the Super Heavy booster had initiated ignition, but some engines did not start properly, triggering an automatic abort of the entire system before the rocket left the launch pad, shutting down all engines. Although this was originally just a not uncommon launch abort in the development process of a large rocket, it occurred at a sensitive stage just one month after SpaceX went public, and the stock price declined by about 3% after hours last Thursday, continuing to decline on Friday. The stock price drop indicates that some investors are more sensitive to the existing risks in SpaceX's rocket development strategy - including frequent testing, frequent failures, and learning from failures to improve. Ivan Feinseth, chief investment officer at Tigress Financial Partners, said: "This launch abort highlights the operational risks that exist in achieving high-frequency launches and repeatable operations in Starship, and further indicates that repeated delays may delay the company's revenue and profit margin improvement trajectory." However, some market participants were very calm about the Starship launch abort last week. SpaceX has taken similar approaches in its main Falcon 9 rocket program - Falcon 9 experienced setbacks in its early days but is now the world's most frequently launched carrier rocket. Caleb Henry, research director at consultancy Quilty Space, said: "The fluctuations in SpaceX's stock price tell me that there are still some investors in the market who do not actually understand the aerospace industry." Key Maiden Flight Thursday's Starship 13th flight is by no means a simple "try again." The Starship 12th flight test conducted on May 22 this year was the first flight of the Starship V3 configuration. During the ascent, one engine of the Super Heavy booster stopped working early; after completing the stage separation, the Starship spacecraft also lost an engine, but continued to complete the main mission with the remaining engines. Subsequently, when the Super Heavy booster executed the return ignition, 5 Raptor engines failed to restart as planned, the return burn ended prematurely, and the booster eventually fell into the sea at a higher speed. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) subsequently launched an accident investigation. The final report concluded that the booster return failure most likely involved two reasons: the thermal environment during the ascent phase affected propulsion system components, and there were issues with the engine warning system parameter settings. The FAA accepted four corrective actions proposed by SpaceX and closed the investigation on July 13, allowing the 13th flight test to proceed. The first thing that the 13th flight test needs to verify is whether the issues exposed in the 12th flight test have truly been resolved, including whether the effects on the propulsion system components can be controlled, whether the engine warning parameters can accurately identify anomalies, and whether the return ignition can be completed as planned. However, the launch abort on July 16 has added difficulty to this test. After completing the previous round of corrective actions, a new Super Heavy booster exposed engine issues again during the ground ignition phase. Musk then stated that SpaceX would replace two Raptor engines and postpone the next attempt to July 23 local time. For a rocket still in the experimental stage, it is not surprising to expose issues; the key is whether similar issues recur and whether each flight can make verifiable progress based on the previous round of data. The real significance of the Starship 13th flight test lies in whether SpaceX can convert the data obtained in the previous flight test into real and effective engineering improvements in the next round. It is worth noting that in addition to verifying the propulsion system, the Starship 13th flight test on Thursday will also conduct deployment tests for 20 Starlink V3 satellites. Unlike previous test flights that primarily carried simulated payloads, these satellites will test the deployment capabilities of the CECEP Solar Energy solar panels, antenna deployment, and laser communication with the existing Starlink network. Although they will not enter long-term operational orbits, it is expected that they will re-enter the atmosphere about 20 minutes after deployment. The Starship will thereby begin to verify its real payload transport and satellite deployment capabilities. Starlink is currently SpaceX's most important cash engine, and the V3 satellites are crucial for the next phase of network capacity. Due to capacity and integration space limitations, the Falcon 9 rocket is unable to handle the large-scale deployment of V3 satellites. If the Starship cannot be put into operation soon, the large-scale networking of Starlink V3 will have to continue to wait. Once operational, SpaceX will be able to transport more satellites in a single mission, significantly increasing the efficiency of constellation expansion and opening up space for the next round of Starlink growth. Overall, what the capital markets are truly concerned about in the Starship 13th flight test is not just whether the mission will ultimately be called "successful" or "partially successful", but more importantly, whether the exposed issues have been resolved and whether the Starship is gradually approaching actual use through successive flight tests. If the rocket successfully completes the V3 satellite deployment, spacecraft engine restart, re-entry, and controlled splashdown, SpaceX will achieve a close-to-complete verification of the V3 configuration. If the ascent flight and satellite deployment are completed smoothly but there are hiccups in the return phase, this mission still has clear value, at least indicating that the Starship is beginning to have real payload deployment capabilities. Less favorable outcomes would be if the engine startup problem reoccurs at the launch pad, or if propulsion system anomalies similar to the 12th flight test recur during flight. This may indicate that the problem is not limited to individual engines, and SpaceX will need to re-examine the propulsion system, thermal environment, warning logic, or hardware consistency, which may slow down the pace of subsequent flight tests. SpaceX has already established the world's most frequent commercial launch system with the Falcon 9 and developed Starlink into a satellite internet network with millions of users. Whether new growth opportunities can be opened up next largely depends on when the Starship matures, when it can handle V3 satellite deployments, lunar transport, and orbital computational infrastructure construction.