Shotwell: “One Starship launch per month”
June 16, 2026

By Chris Forrester



Gwynne Shotwell, president and COO of SpaceX, has confirmed that her engineers are building one of the massive Starship ‘super heavy’ rockets per month. She is working to reduce this to a manufacturing rate of two rockets per week.

During an interview Shotwell said that Test flight #13 should take place during July, and then be followed by #14, already being described as the ‘big one’ in that SpaceX will attempt a full orbital injection and journey from its Texas base. Thereafter, SpaceX – subject to these successful test flight – will ramp up to a monthly launch rate. She also hinted that by Flight #15 SpaceX was considering launching from Cape Canaveral.


Shotwell confirmed SpaceX expected Starship to be fully operational in orbit by the end of this year. However, the regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Authority remains a significant bottleneck which will no doubt be solved, but the manufacturing and engineering pipeline is completely being managed and achieved.

The difference in the plan, compared to the current near-launch cadence of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, is considerable and part of SpaceX’s move to a fully fledged space transportation company and as part of the company’s efforts of getting to the Moon – and perhaps beyond.