By most accounts, SpaceX’s 14th Starship test flight on Monday was an overwhelming success.
Sure there were problems. A vacuum Raptor engine failure had engineers teetering on cutting the mission short and falling well short of the company’s original goal of circling the Earth six times. But the enormous rocket — the most powerful ever built — took to the skies, leaving its Super Heavy booster behind and settling in a stable orbit just over 171 miles over the Earth roughly 20 minutes into the launch. It effortlessly released 26 V3 Starlink satellites in orbit. It even managed to decelerate, right itself, and gently splash down in the Pacific Ocean, as planned.
But investors were seemingly unimpressed by the ordeal. SpaceX’s stock slid by just over two percent on Monday and is now hovering lower than it was a week ago. It’s a counterintuitive market reaction that has SpaceX backers baffled.
“Explain to me why the stock is down over one percent right now from the opening,” one confused investor tweeted. “SpaceX just delivered [S]tarlink V3s into orbit. The stock should be going through the roof.”
