Making interstellar travel feel like flying a plane! SpaceX plans to build a global spaceport, calling for preparations for IPO and aiming to carry out 1,000 launches per year

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk once again made bold remarks on the 13th, announcing plans to build “spaceports” around the world, while reports also say he is in talks with Google’s parent company Alphabet about cooperation—aiming to send AI data centers into Earth orbit. All of these developments are paving the way for the company’s first public offering (IPO) that kicked off in June this year, with a valuation of over $1.75 trillion.

Starship’s goal is to fly thousands of times per year—one base is no longer enough

On Wednesday, SpaceX released an official statement saying the company’s goal is to launch the Starship rocket “thousands of times” each year, and acknowledged that existing launch sites cannot possibly support such a frequency. Musk wrote on X: “SpaceX is actively evaluating multiple locations domestically and internationally, in preparation for building the world’s most advanced spaceports.”

Starship is considering several locations domestically and internationally to build the world’s most advanced spaceports!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2026

The reason Starship can achieve such launch volumes lies in its design. Unlike traditional one-off rockets, Starship, together with the Super Heavy booster, can be rapidly recovered and relaunched with minimal maintenance, and its maximum payload per flight exceeds 100 tons.

Musk compares future spaceports to modern airports—multiple daily departures and fast redeployment, making interstellar travel as routine as taking a plane. At present, Starship’s test flights are concentrated at Starbase in Texas, while facilities in Florida are still being expanded. SpaceX has even begun modifying two offshore oil-rig platforms, “Deimos” and “Phobos,” to serve as future offshore launch pads.

Google partners with SpaceX—opportunities for space data centers come to the surface

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal also revealed that Google is in talks with SpaceX over rocket launch contracts, with the goal of putting data center hardware into low Earth orbit. The plan falls under Google’s “Project Suncatcher” research project. The project aims to deploy AI cloud computing infrastructure in orbit using solar-powered satellites carrying Google’s own TPU chips. The first batch of prototype satellite launches is expected to be completed as early as 2027 together with partner Planet Labs.

Google is not the only tech giant showing interest in SpaceX. Just a week ago, AI company Anthropic signed an agreement with SpaceX to use all computing resources from its Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, and it clearly expressed interest in orbital data centers.

Interestingly, SpaceX completed its acquisition of Elon Musk’s AI company xAI earlier this year in February, integrating it into its internal AI division and aggressively moving into the compute capacity market. It is also said that SpaceX has already applied to regulators for authorization to launch as many as 1 million satellites, to support the long-term operation of orbital data centers.

(GPU utilization is as low as 11%—is Musk leasing compute power to Anthorpic to package a valuation boost for SpaceX’s listing?)

Are space data centers a revolutionary business opportunity—or a distant dream?

TechCrunch analysis notes that the concept of orbital data centers is commercially logical. Ground-based data centers face massive power consumption, difficulty acquiring land, and community pushback—while SpaceX argues that space computing costs could be lower than those on the ground in the coming years.

However, challenges can’t be ignored either: issues such as hardware heat dissipation, cosmic radiation, orbital maintenance, data transmission latency, and the still extremely high deployment costs are the high walls that this concept must overcome to turn from blueprint into reality.

Countdown to the biggest IPO in history—SpaceX targets the secondary market

SpaceX’s expansion of its space business lands right in the critical period as it pushes toward its IPO. Insiders say SpaceX plans to go public in June this year, targeting a valuation of about $1.75 trillion. The fundraising amount is expected to reach $75 billion, which could make it the largest IPO in the world ever.

Starship’s 12th test flight is also expected to take place on May 19. It will first test the next-generation booster and engine systems, further confirming the feasibility of fully reusable commercialized operations. At that time, SpaceX will initially validate whether its space exploration roadmap can become reality.

This article makes interstellar travel feel like flying! SpaceX plans to build global spaceports, saying it will gear up for thousands of launches per year as it targets an IPO. The earliest appearance of this was on Lian News ABMedia.