SpaceX（SPCX.）has been listed on the Nasdaq for less than a month and a half, and Starship already saw its 13th test flight—at 6:51 a.m. Beijing time on July 25, Starship lifted off from the Starbase in Texas, deploying 20 production-version Starlink V3 satellites for the first time during the test. The upper spacecraft achieved a controlled soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, which Musk described as “intact and transmitting telemetry back.” However, the super heavy booster’s “hard splashdown” in the Gulf of Mexico occurred because some engines failed to reignite, and the reusability objective has not yet been fully realized.

💡 Technically, it’s a milestone, but it’s a day of divergence in the capital markets: SPCX closed at $115.07 that day, down 7.2% over the past five trading days, with more than $1 trillion wiped out versus its peak. Tesla (TSLA) also plunged 18% that week, and Musk’s personal wealth fell by about $130 billion in a week.

The commercial space sector was clearly boosted, with space-themed names such as the Destiny Tech100 index fund (DXYZ) staying active. Starship has moved from “mass simulation” to “real payload deployment,” marking a landmark step toward commercial launches, but the reusability capability of the first-stage booster remains the key variable the Wall Street crowd is watching—this will determine whether Starship’s promised “launch cost curve” can truly be realized.

With lock-up shares set to be released in August, SPCX may continue to see choppy trading in the short term; in the long run, once Starship fully reuses successfully, the space-economy exposure represented by SpaceX, TSLA, and DXYZ will be repriced.