Newsletter · · Ashutosh Agarwal

Starship Targets First Orbital Flight as SpaceX Faces a Share Supply Overhang - The Satellite & Space-Comms Race - Week of September 25, 2026

For the week of September 25, 2026, the podcast tape flipped bearish on SpaceX as its trading float expands ahead of Starship's first orbital attempt on Sept 28, while AST SpaceMobile logged a quiet Paris conference with one defense proof point.

The Satellite & Space-Comms Race

Week of September 25, 2026: Starship Targets First Orbital Flight as SpaceX Faces a Share Supply Overhang

On Monday, September 28, SpaceX plans to do something it has never done before: fly Starship all the way to orbit, carrying real, working Starlink satellites.

That's the rocket story. The stock story is running the other way.

This week the loudest SpaceX voices on podcasts weren't the fans. They were the skeptics, and their argument had nothing to do with rockets. It was about supply. More and more SpaceX shares are unlocking for sale, and early holders who made fortunes want out.

Meanwhile, AST SpaceMobile had the kind of week its own biggest fan podcast called "quiet." And when an AST bull admits nothing happened, you know nothing happened.

Let's get into it.

TL;DR

  • Starship Flight 14 is targeted for Monday, Sept 28. It slipped from Sept 22 without explanation. It's the first attempt to reach orbit, carrying 26 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites, and one host says those 26 alone add about 3% of the whole Starlink network's capacity. No booster or ship recovery will be tried.

  • The SpaceX bear case got louder. Fund manager George Noble, a guest on Steve Eisman's podcast, called SpaceX "built to fail." His argument: the share of stock free to trade ("float") has jumped from about 5% to 20–25%, and roughly 7% more unlocks every few weeks. He values the whole company at $300–500B, against a $1.7T market value. Yale's Roger Ibbotson made the same seller-supply point on the Meb Faber Show.

  • AST: a quiet week with one useful nugget. An AST executive's summary of the Paris conference, read out on the AST SpaceMobile Podcast, says the US defense community has already seen a demonstration using AST's 12 BlueBird satellites in orbit. BlueBird 11 still hasn't unfolded, based on public tracking data, and no new batch of satellites has been seen shipping.

What's new

Ranked by what matters most for a portfolio.

1. Starship Flight 14: first try at orbit, with real payload

Source: This Week in Space: "What's a HOTOL? - Britain in Space" (Sept 18) · Tariq Malik and Rod Pyle, space journalists · PUNDIT Also: Astronomy Daily (Sept 23) · Breakaway: "AI, Jensen & Nvidia, TSLA, SPCX, Markets" (Sept 19)

On This Week in Space, Tariq Malik described it plainly. Flight 14 is "SpaceX's first attempt to enter orbit with a Starship rocket. It's going to be carrying operational version three Starlink satellites."

A few details worth knowing:

  • The date moved. SpaceX first announced Sept 22, then pushed it to Monday, Sept 28, "without really explaining why."

  • It's a long, careful flight. The mission lasts about 10 hours. SpaceX won't try to recover the booster or the ship. The hosts noted this is a step-by-step approach, unlike the older Starship tests that tried everything at once.

  • SpaceX is its own customer. The satellites on board are for Starlink's paying business, so this doubles as a real delivery.

  • The pad is ready. By Sept 23, Astronomy Daily reported the booster was on the pad and the ship had been test-fired. They're wisely calling it "targeted, not scheduled."

The Breakaway host (unnamed, a SpaceX and Tesla bull) added the numbers: 26 Starlink V3 satellites, which "are going to account for 3% of the capacity of all the Starlinks already up in the Constellation, which is like 11,000." He also relayed that Musk has said Flight 15 will attempt the "chopstick" catch of the booster at the Texas launch site.

Why it moves numbers: Starship is the linchpin for almost everything bullish about SpaceX. That includes the bigger V3 satellites, cheaper launches, and the plan to retire Falcon 9 (see item 3). A clean flight supports the valuation. A failure feeds straight into the bear case below. And for AST, cheaper, bigger launches from anyone help its own deployment math over time.

2. The SpaceX bear case: it's about share supply, not rockets

Source: The Real Eisman Playbook: Ep 76, "Stock Picking in Difficult Times with George Noble" (Sept 21) · George Noble, fund manager publicly short SpaceX, interviewed by Steve Eisman · INVESTOR Also: The Meb Faber Show #651, with Roger Ibbotson (Sept 18) · Roger Ibbotson, Yale professor emeritus · INVESTOR/ACADEMIC

Noble didn't mince words:

"Starting with SpaceX, it's built to fail."

His case is interesting because he sets the valuation argument aside ("forget about the 90 times revenues... we all know that already") and focuses on something more mechanical: the lockup. That's the period after an IPO when early investors are barred from selling. It is now ending, in stages.

  • After the recent earnings, the free-trading share count went "from 5% of shares... to like 20% or 25%," Noble said. "Every few weeks, 7% more is going to go into the free float."

  • His logic: a tiny float plus a great story inflated the price. As the float grows toward 100%, "if nothing changes fundamentally... the stock's going to go down."

  • He points to forced sellers. Some universities now hold SpaceX stakes so big that they have to sell to stay diversified.

Then the sum-of-the-parts math, meaning valuing each business separately and adding them up:

  • Starlink: "$200 billion, $300 billion, some number like that."

  • xAI: bought for stock "at an inflated price of $250 billion. It's worth a fraction of that."

  • Rockets: "yeah, it's cool," but mostly narrative.

  • Total: "$300 billion, $400 billion, $500 billion. The market cap's a trillion seven."

His per-share value: "$30, $40, $50 a share. Since you're in a good mood, I'll give you $60." SpaceX trades around $140. He also calls it an AI story more than a space story, pointing out that about $22 trillion of the roughly $29 trillion market size in the IPO filing was AI-related:

"It is not really a space play. It's really an AI play, okay, with a rocket thing attached to it."

Ibbotson got to the same place by a different route. He noted SpaceX "only issued less than 5% of the new stock. The other 95% is basically the old stock." Those holders "have made a bundle" and "want to ultimately cash out." His verdict: "I think the long-term prospects of SpaceX, I'm not positive on at all." (Host Meb Faber added, self-mockingly, that he passed on SpaceX as a private investment 24 times.)

Why it moves numbers: For a PM, the float point matters more than the valuation debate. The unlock schedule is known and mechanical. Every tranche is new supply the market has to absorb, whatever Starship does on Monday. Keep in mind that Noble is openly short and talking his book, and that his target implies a ~60–80% drop.

3. Falcon 9's 2028 retirement puts a spotlight on Rocket Lab

Source: Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing: "The Looming Constraint of the Space Industry" (Sept 22) · Tyler Crowe (host), Matt Frankel and Lou Whiteman (Motley Fool contributors) · PUNDIT

Last week, SpaceX's leadership talked on All-In about eventually retiring Falcon 9. This week the Fool crew put a date on it: 2028, assuming Starship is ready to take over. Lou Whiteman called that a real caveat: "If Starship, something goes wrong or it's not ready for prime time, I don't think you'll see the Falcon 9 retired as planned."

The timing is awkward. The rest of the heavy-launch market is having problems:

  • Blue Origin's New Glenn has been "down since May."

  • ULA's Vulcan was "grounded in February."

  • Demand keeps rising. A Space Development Agency program manager recently said "thousands of satellites are scheduled to launch by 2030. And there simply aren't enough vehicles to launch them."

Matt Frankel's take on who benefits:

"I think Rocket Lab is the natural winner here. Now, the stock is priced for that, but the Neutron is arriving at, honestly, the exact right time to take advantage."

Whiteman pushed back on how far that goes. Neutron and Firefly's rockets "are coming in smaller," so they can't fill Falcon 9's shoes, and "there is a real void there." His view is that the real winners are companies with a Pentagon blessing, "because the one thing I'm sure of is, is that nothing will be delayed on the military side." Commercial companies that still need to book rides are "a likely loser or at least delayed."

He also delivered the line of the week for anyone holding space-supplier stocks:

"I know a lot of great businesses that are just kind of sitting in neutral right now, waiting for Starship."

Other names that came up: component maker Karman (the transcript spells it "Carmen"), which Frankel says is guiding to 57% revenue growth this year at a lower multiple than pure-play launch stocks; Redwire as another supplier exposed to delays; and Relativity Space's Terran R, a private attempt at a true Falcon 9-class replacement. Frankel's closing point was that when there are more satellites than rockets, "the companies that have the rockets will have the pricing power."

Why it moves numbers: A launch shortage means pricing power for anyone with a working rocket. That's the bull case for Rocket Lab's Neutron, but only once it flies. It's also a quiet risk for satellite operators (AST included) and component makers whose backlogs depend on getting to orbit on time.

4. AST: a quiet Paris conference, with a defense proof point

Source: AST SpaceMobile Podcast: "Why Was $ASTS Dead Silent at the Paris Conference?" (Sept 21) · "Kook," anonymous SpaceMob investor and host, not affiliated with the company · INVESTOR (relaying company statements)

The host opened with a confession: "There just hasn't been a lot going on with ASTS." He said he expected the Paris industry conference to bring news on deals, government contracts, "anything," and instead there was "almost nothing. Which is very peculiar." AST was there. Peter Lindmark attended, and a panel with Scott covered how direct-to-device service scales. But "the energy... just didn't seem really to be there."

The most useful thing he read out was an AST statement. He attributed it to Michael Pollack of AST, summarizing the company's Paris presentation. Leaders from the US Space Force and allied defense ministries were in the room, "many... encountering ASTS for the first time." The key line:

"The U.S. defense community has already seen an early demonstration of what is possible using our existing 12 Bluebird satellites in orbit today."

That's a step up from last week. Then we had a fan podcast reading an FCC filing about "space-based sensing and targeting." Now there's a company statement, secondhand, that the US military has already seen the satellites demonstrated. It still isn't a contract.

The rest of the episode:

  • BlueBird 11 is still folded. Using public orbital tracking data, the host said "I don't think it's unfurled," but the satellite is "cruising along just as it should." A popular theory says AST is testing station-keeping (holding position in orbit) at different power settings. He's "not 100% convinced that that's right" or wrong.

  • The next batch hasn't shipped. The host and a partner have set up "surveillance systems" to spot shipments. He points to the Antonov cargo planes still landing at AST's Midland, Texas, factory as proof production isn't slowing. AST is hiring another launch program manager. His forecast is "onesies and twosies on Falcons per month for a little bit," then a "much more scaled launch campaign" in 2027.

  • The "one bar" problem. He quoted Vodafone's Tim Bodie, vice chairman of Satellite Connect Europe, saying satellites can also solve "the one bar problem," meaning weak signal inside nominally covered areas, and not just places with no signal at all. He cited fellow investor Anpanman's estimate that this is 20–30% of the total market opportunity.

  • Competition. He called Viasat's Equatys joint venture, a shared satellite network for multiple phone carriers, basically AST's business model, but outsourced to a prime contractor. His view: outsourced constellations "have mostly failed," and this looks "more like a paper constellation." (He's openly an AST bull, so weigh that accordingly.)

  • Japan. The Rakuten JV (JLEO) "will be announced at some point." It's still not signed.

Two quotes that capture the stock right now:

"If you're just trying to get exposure to the theme, just buy Rocket Lab because it seems to deliver exactly the same stock price movement for now."

"ASTS, I'd be shocked if it goes to 250 tomorrow... But could it go to 2,500 over three years where I have extreme conviction around it? Yes."

Why it moves numbers: Nothing here changes near-term revenue. The defense statement supports the idea that AST has a second, government customer on top of phone carriers. Without shipments or a BlueBird 11 unfold, though, the stock is trading with the space sector as a group, and the host admits it.

5. Carriers and regulators: small but real steps

Sources:

T-Mobile's physics argument. The clip is the sharpest carrier comment against Starlink's direct-to-phone ambitions this cycle:

"The physics just don't allow direct-to-cell to be a substitute. They're 350 kilometers up... you can't get through buildings, walls. You can't even get through a Tesla windscreen."

The same speaker went through each route Starlink might take to become a full carrier and rejected them one by one. An MVNO (renting capacity on T-Mobile's network) "doesn't fit." Buying a company with spectrum hits "change of control provisions." Mandatory roaming "doesn't work because that's not on data." And a femtocell (small home-cell) strategy would need "probably over a billion femtocells." The Breakaway host was furious. He argued SpaceX wouldn't talk about phone service on its earnings call "if they didn't already know it was possible." Both sides are talking their book, but it tells you how tense the carrier/Starlink relationship has become.

A retail reseller signs up for AST. On All the Hacks, Chris Hutchins said the carrier-hopping service US Mobile will add "the AST Space Mobile functionality to warp lines" (US Mobile's Verizon-based lines) and "Starlink direct to sell" in Q4 or Q1. It's a small reseller. Still, it's a real consumer product with AST's name on it. Hutchins's experience with T-Mobile's Starlink beta was less flattering to Starlink: "it never worked or I was able to use it or needed it one time."

FCC spectrum vote. Network Break reported the FCC has proposed opening "more than 1,000 MHz of spectrum in the 12.7 and 42 GHz bands" for satellite broadband to homes, planes, ships, and ground networks, with a vote on September 30. These are broadband bands, not direct-to-phone bands. It's a positive for Starlink, Amazon Leo, and dish-based broadband players, and doesn't matter much for AST. The same episode noted in-space transport startup Impulse Space added $308M to its Series D, bringing the round to $808M. That's a sign private money is still flowing into space hardware.

The debate: how big is the direct-to-device market?

The bull case

  • The market is bigger than places with no signal. The Vodafone quote pushes the opportunity past the "1% problem" (zero coverage) to the "one bar problem." AST investors put that at 20–30% of the addressable market. If a satellite can fill weak spots inside covered areas, this becomes an everyday product, not an emergency backup.
  • Governments are a second customer. AST says the US defense community has already seen a demonstration on its 12 satellites. BlackRock's Reid Menge, on The Bid (Sept 25, INVESTOR), said the Space Force budget is "going up 100% next year" and will be about 5% of the defense budget.
  • Mainstream money is paying attention. Menge called direct-to-device the thing he's "super excited for": "when you land at Newark, your phone works because it's connected to a satellite, not to a cell tower."
  • Distribution is widening. A new retail carrier (US Mobile) is adding both AST and Starlink.

The bear case

  • Physics. T-Mobile's CFO argues signal strength from 350 km up can't reach inside buildings, or even through a car windshield, so satellites can't replace towers. That echoes Ron Baron's admission last week that direct-to-phone "still doesn't get through walls."
  • Nobody knows how it gets paid for. Even the AST host admits "I still have some questions around how this monetizes," whether it's a day pass, a weekly pass, or part of the carrier's network.
  • Real users have been underwhelmed. One consumer host found T-Mobile's Starlink beta never actually worked when he tried it.
  • Launch is the bottleneck. With Falcon 9 retiring on paper, New Glenn down, and Vulcan grounded, every satellite operator's timeline depends on rides that may not exist.

Our read: Both sides can be right. Direct-to-device looks like a premium add-on that fills gaps, not a tower replacement. The "one bar" framing is the bull's best argument because it doesn't require satellites to beat towers indoors. It only requires them to help at the edges. What decides the stocks is timing, and timing depends on launch capacity.

Stocks in play

AST SpaceMobile (ASTS)

  • Bull: The company says US defense has already seen a demonstration on 12 satellites in orbit. Production keeps running (Antonov flights, launch hires). US Mobile adds a consumer distribution channel. Vodafone is backing the "one bar" use case.
  • Bear: A quiet Paris conference. BlueBird 11 still folded. No batch shipped. JLEO and any formal T-Mobile deal still unsigned. The stock is trading in step with the space sector instead of on its own news.
  • Next catalyst: The first shipment of the next batch to the Cape and the Falcon 9 launch. A BlueBird 11 unfold. Any defense contract or JLEO signing.

Rocket Lab (RKLB)

  • Bull: The "natural winner" from Falcon 9's 2028 retirement and a launch shortage (SDA: "thousands of satellites... by 2030... not enough vehicles").
  • Bear: "The stock is priced for that" (Frankel). Neutron is smaller than Falcon 9 and has been "slower to develop." Still no first-flight date on any podcast this week.
  • Next catalyst: A Neutron first-flight date.

SpaceX (listed; the Breakaway episode title uses "SPCX")

  • Bull: Starship Flight 14 on Sept 28 carrying V3 Starlinks (26 satellites ≈ 3% of network capacity). Flight 15 catch attempt. Launch costs heading from ~$3,000/kg on Falcon 9 toward ~$200/kg on Starship (Menge). A first orbital AI-server demo targeted around Q4 2027, scaling in 2028 (Menge).
  • Bear: Float expanding from ~5% to 20–25%, with ~7% more every few weeks (Noble). Sum-of-parts $300–500B vs $1.7T. xAI "worth a fraction" of its $250B price. Seller supply (Ibbotson). "Losing money right now because of xAI" (Mark Skousen, Wealthion, Sept 21, in passing).
  • Price path, per Vivian Tu on Networth and Chill (Sept 23, PUNDIT): priced at $135 → opened $150 → closed day one at $160.95 → $225 a week later → ~$145 a month after IPO → ~$108 at the end of July → ~$140 now. She also recalled a ~$60B all-stock deal for Cursor near the peak, a 4.4% drop on the day SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100 (July 7), and an 8% drop on news of Starlink price cuts in Memphis.
  • Next catalyst: Flight 14 on Sept 28. The next lockup tranches. The FCC broadband-spectrum vote on Sept 30.

Globalstar (GSAT): Quiet week on Globalstar. No podcast coverage, and no Apple emergency-SOS discussion.

Iridium (IRDM): Quiet week on Iridium.

EchoStar (SATS): Quiet week on EchoStar. No discussion of the spectrum sale to SpaceX.

Read-throughs

  • Carriers (VZ, T, TMUS). T-Mobile is the most combative, with a CFO clip calling Starlink phone service physically unable to substitute for towers and rejecting every path to a Starlink carrier business. Verizon gets indirect help from US Mobile putting AST on its Verizon-based "Warp" lines. AT&T wasn't discussed this week beyond being one of US Mobile's underlying networks.

  • Incumbents (IRDM, SATS, Viasat). Iridium and EchoStar were quiet. Viasat came up as the would-be AST challenger through the Equatys shared-network JV, which the AST host dismissed as a "paper constellation" and compared to EchoStar talking up its spectrum before selling it.

  • Launch and components. Rocket Lab and Firefly were named near-term winners from the launch crunch. Blue Origin (New Glenn "down since May") and ULA (Vulcan "grounded in February") were named as capacity holes. Karman was flagged as a component supplier guiding to 57% growth at a lower multiple, with Redwire as another supplier exposed to Starship delays. Private Relativity Space (Terran R) and Impulse Space ($808M Series D) show private capital is still backing launch and in-orbit transport. Planet Labs came up on The Bid as an example of small, cheap satellites (a comms satellite used to cost ~$500M; toaster-sized ones now cost ~$100K).

  • SpaceX as a sentiment gauge. At ~$140, the stock is roughly 38% below its ~$225 post-IPO peak and about where it was two weeks ago. The debate has moved from "how high" to "who's selling." If Flight 14 goes well and SpaceX still can't hold up against the unlock supply, that would be a bad sign for high-multiple space stocks in general, AST and Rocket Lab included.

What changed vs last week

  • Starship: a firm date. Last week, Flight 14 was just "the last flight before the catch attempt." Now it's targeted for Sept 28 (after slipping from Sept 22), with 26 V3 Starlinks, a 10-hour mission, and no recovery attempts.

  • Falcon 9 retirement now has a year. Last week's "eventual retirement" (from SpaceX leadership on All-In) is now being discussed as 2028, contingent on Starship.

  • SpaceX sentiment flipped from bull to bear. Last week's featured voice was Ron Baron's $14–15T Starlink vision. This week it was George Noble's $300–500B total valuation and a detailed float-unlock argument, backed by Ibbotson. The price barely moved (~$140, versus the $140–150 range cited two weeks ago).

  • AST defense went from filing to company statement. Last week: a fan podcast reading an FCC filing. This week: an AST executive saying US defense has seen a demonstration on 12 satellites. It's an upgrade, but still not a contract.

  • AST's to-do list is unchanged. BlueBird 11 is still folded. No shipment spotted ahead of the expected early-October Falcon 9 launch. No formal T-Mobile deal. JLEO still "will be announced at some point."

  • Carriers: T-Mobile's position got more detailed. Last week: no Starlink MVNO or back door. This week: an explicit physics argument plus rebuttals of the roaming and femtocell routes. New: US Mobile adding AST and Starlink.

  • Still quiet: Globalstar, Iridium, EchoStar, Europe's IRIS² and Eutelsat, Amazon Leo, and any Neutron date.