SpaceX scrubs Starship V3 debut a day after filing $1.75T IPO

SpaceX called off the first launch of its third-generation Starship V3 rocket on Thursday after a malfunctioning hydraulic pin on the launch tower's umbilical arm triggered an automated abort roughly 40 seconds before liftoff at Starbase, Texas. The scrub landed one day after the company publicly filed its S-1 for what is expected to be the largest IPO in Wall Street history.

"The hydraulic pin holding the tower arm in place did not retract," Elon Musk wrote on X, according to Euronews. Musk said another attempt would follow Friday, May 22, at 5:30 p.m. CT if engineers could repair the pin overnight, the BBC reported.

The count had already absorbed a series of automated holds tied to a propellant line, a tower sensor and the water deluge system before the pin issue stopped the clock, CNN reported. Flight 12 is Starship's first test in seven months and the debut of the 408-foot V3 vehicle launching from the new Pad 2.

A launch the prospectus can't afford to fumble

The timing is not incidental. SpaceX filed its S-1 publicly on May 20, targeting a valuation of up to $1.75 trillion and a listing on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX. Pricing could come as early as June 11, with trading expected around June 12, Proactive Investors reported. The offering would surpass Saudi Aramco's $29.4 billion 2019 listing.

Goldman Sachs is leading the underwriting syndicate, followed by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. BlackRock is reportedly weighing an allocation of up to $10 billion, per Proactive Investors. The investor roadshow begins in early June, meaning Flight 12 is effectively a live demo for the bankers selling the book.

That framing matters. Most coverage has treated Thursday's scrub as awkward optics. Read the filing, and it's something harder: the company has told the SEC, in writing, that the vehicle sitting on Pad 2 is the single biggest thing that could go wrong for investors buying in at a trillion-plus valuation.

Falcon 9 pays the bills. Starship doesn't.

SpaceX disclosed in the S-1 that it has spent more than $15 billion developing Starship, Bloomberg reported. The program is not profitable. Falcon 9 is. Starlink connectivity revenue reached $11.4 billion in 2025, and total company revenue hit $18.6 billion, up 33% year-over-year, against a $4.9 billion net loss, NBC News reported.

The first quarter of 2026 tells a sharper story: $4.7 billion in sales, a $4.3 billion net loss, and $10.1 billion in capital expenditure, more than double a year earlier. Of that, $7.7 billion went to the company's AI division, which now houses Grok after the xAI absorption. The S-1 claims a $28.5 trillion total addressable market, with $22.7 trillion attributed to enterprise AI, TechCrunch reported.

Investors will also be buying into a governance structure that concentrates control. Per the S-1, Musk will retain more than 85% of combined voting power through a dual-class share arrangement. A successful offering could push his net worth above $1 trillion.

What V3 has to prove

Starship V3 is the first variant SpaceX says is capable of flying to the Moon and Mars. NASA is counting on the vehicle for the Artemis 3 docking test in 2027 and the Artemis 4 lunar landing in late 2028, Space.com reported. The design includes redesigned Raptor engines, larger propellant tanks, revised grid fins, and an upper stage reworked to stop propellant from pooling inside the vehicle, a recurring failure mode on earlier flights.

The S-1 puts a number on the ambition.

We expect that Starship V3 will be able to carry a payload of 100 metric tons, with future generations of Starship being designed to double this payload.

SpaceX S-1 filing

The program has taken hits in the months leading up to Flight 12. A V3 booster was destroyed during a ground fueling test at Starbase in November 2025. "The test site incurred very little damage and of course nobody was hurt in the incident," Joe Petrzelka, SpaceX's vice president of booster engineering, said at the time, per CNN. More recently, a SpaceX contractor died in a fall at Starbase, and OSHA has opened an investigation, Scientific American reported.

The roadshow math

For the underwriters, a clean Friday launch is worth more than a successful one delivered in July. Pricing as early as June 11 leaves a narrow window for the V3 to put a confidence-building image in front of fund managers. A scrub is recoverable. A loss-of-vehicle event during the roadshow is harder to model into a $1.75 trillion valuation.

The stakeholders pulling on the same rope tell the story. NASA needs V3 to make Artemis work on schedule, with Blue Origin competing on the lander side. The SEC is reviewing the prospectus. BlackRock is sizing a check. Bret Johnsen, SpaceX's chief financial officer, has been signaling valuation and timing to existing shareholders for months. Each of them is reading the same risk disclosure.

Thursday's hydraulic pin is the smallest possible version of that risk made visible. Friday's attempt, if it goes, will be the largest possible version of the rebuttal.