(Bloomberg) -- SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell fired off fresh criticism at US regulators on Friday, saying rocket launch approvals need to catch up with the pace her company is innovating.
“Technology is easy. Physics is easy. People are hard, and regulator people are the hardest,” Shotwell told a conference hosted by Baron Capital in New York on Friday. “All we ask is: regulate industries. Make them safe, make them right, make them fair. But we’ve got to go faster. Much faster.”
Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company plans to launch the sixth major test of its new Starship vehicle on Tuesday, and sees as many as 400 launches of the moon and Mars craft over the next four years, Shotwell said. That compares with a record 148 missions that US regulators authorized for the entire commercial space industry in the government’s most recent fiscal year.
Critics such as SpaceX have heaped pressure on the US Federal Aviation Administration to speed up what they contend is a sluggish approval process for commercial space operations. In September, Musk, SpaceX’s founder and Chief Executive Officer, called on the head of the FAA to resign and claimed that government paperwork to license a launch takes longer than building the actual rocket.
On Thursday, the FAA said it plans to update its launch and reentry licensing rule, as the number of space operations could more than double by 2028, it said.
SpaceX Valuation
Investors in SpaceX are paying close attention to the company’s progress on Starship, the centerpiece of Musk’s plans to launch huge batches of its Starlink internet satellites to orbit and put humans on the moon and eventually Mars.
SpaceX is in early discussions to sell insider shares that could boost the company’s value to around $255 billion, people familiar with the matter said. That would be a premium to SpaceX’s previous valuation of about $210 billion. It would also cement SpaceX’s status as the most valuable private US company.
SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., declined to comment on the valuation.
The Financial Times, citing people with knowledge of the talks, earlier reported SpaceX is preparing to launch a tender offer in December that will sell existing shares at about $135 each.
The secondary offering, where employees and some early shareholders can sell shares, provides investors in SpaceX a new way to profit off of Musk’s deep ties with President-elect Donald Trump and the windfalls across the billionaire’s business empire. Shares in electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc., Musk’s only publicly traded company, have jumped 26% since the Nov. 5 election, adding $200 billion to its market capitalization.
Subscribe Now: Business of Space newsletter, a weekly look at the inside stories of investments beyond Earth.
Industry Dominance
SpaceX made big strides during its last Starship flight on Oct. 13, completing a journey to space that included catching the vehicle’s booster back at the launchpad using giant mechanical arms.
Asked about SpaceX’s dominance in the launch market and its trajectory toward becoming a monopoly, Shotwell said, “It’s not a planned monopoly, right? If our competitors could get it together.”
“I hope the others can catch up, right? Competition is good for industries,” she said separately.
SpaceX’s Starlink unit is cranking out some 60 satellites per week, with roughly 7,000 satellites in orbit, and will begin rolling out its “direct-to-cell” service in the next month or so, Shotwell said. SpaceX is one of a handful of companies trying to use satellites to provide connectivity to everyday consumer smartphones, though the market is in its infancy.
Shotwell remained tight-lipped about SpaceX’s financials, but said the company would make “some money” on Starlink this year.
(Updates with details on SpaceX’s shares from seventh paragraph.)
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.