Elon Musk, a Multibillionaire and the CEO of SpaceX, the American private aerospace manufacturer and space transport company, has officially unveiled his plans to produce 10,000 Starship rockets a year. Elon Musk quoted SMX and reposted it on X, confirming the news on Sunday.
SMX, an American news outlet, reported that SpaceX was going to produce Starships as if they were aeroplanes. They reported that with a $250 million Gigabay at Starbase, the company was accelerating Starship production. The 700,000-square-foot facility was designed to manufacture up to 10,000 rockets per year.
Elon Musk confirmed the news with a repost captioned “Yes, at massive volume. Maybe as high as 10,000 ships per year,” yesterday.
He already mentioned the impact of Starship rockets on NASA’s Artemis mission; his ambitious plan to make $10,000 rockets per year will boost the Space agency’s mission. SpaceX’s official website summarized that Starship was a critical piece in maintaining national policy and in realizing key national priorities, such as returning American astronauts to the Moon as part of the Artemis Program. They stated that these national goals would only be achieved by advancing the entire launch industry’s ability to fly rapidly and reliably, ideally from multiple locations to increase resilience to uncontrollable variables like weather.
Back in August 2025, Elon Musk projected that building 1,000 Starships per year was within reach, and his company would make it possible at some point. Elon Clips shared on X by quoting Elon Musk, who stated that making 1,000 Starships a year was actually very achievable.
He mentioned that at some point, they would probably be making as many Starships for Mars as Boeing and Airbus made commercial airplanes. In terms of Starlink satellites, he indicated that they would be making on the order of 5,000 a year, and maybe at some point closer to 10,000 a year. He noted that those Starlink v3 satellites were each the size of a 737 and were pretty big, comparing them to the B-24 bomber in World War II. He concluded that these numbers, while insanely high by traditional space standards, were achievable by humans because they had been achieved in other industries.
SpaceX Faces Regulatory Hurdles as Musk’s Starship Ambitions Stir Debate
In 2026, SpaceX is preparing for the first launch of Starship V3, a special spacecraft exclusively designed for deep-space missions. 2026 will be a busy year for SpaceX, but its ambitious dream will not be easy because regulatory approvals for Florida launches and iterative testing remain uncertain, making Musk’s Mars missions extremely difficult. Apart from that, SpaceX is targeting a possible Initial Public Offering (IPO) this year, which will likely push the American private aerospace manufacturer’s valuation to $1.5 trillion.
Elon Musk’s comment created different opinions among industry experts. They believe that building, launching, and utilizing 10,000 Starships annually would require an advanced infrastructure, and it could be beyond current commercial and government needs. An excerpt from a Reddit discussion claims that Elon said a lot of things, including that 10,000 Starships a year, which were all reusable, could fly a certain number of times. They argued that this was an absurd amount of mass to orbit and that, despite wildest dreams, it wouldn’t serve a realistic purpose.
Reddit user, named Lando 249, commented that the purpose of Starship was to send them in huge numbers to deliver cargo of all sorts, and eventually people, to build livable bases on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. He noted that he was not saying they would see 10,000 in a year, but over time, it was not far-fetched to have a fleet that large, especially as the process improved.
