BREAKING NEWS: Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas Says Starship Flight 15 Is SpaceX's Biggest Reusability Test Since the IPO

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Sunday, October 11, 2026 | SPCX last close: $162.57 (Fri, Oct 9)

The Headline

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas is out with a new note on SpaceX (SPCX) that puts Starship Flight 15, about a month away, at the center of the story. He calls it SpaceX’s biggest test toward Starship reusability since the IPO, says Flight 16, targeted before year end, could be even bigger, and keeps his $300 price target. That target is about 85% above Friday’s $162.57 close.

What Jonas Said

In his own words, from the note:

His message to investors:

The Math That Matters: One Starship Equals a Month or More of Falcon 9

Jonas laid out why each Starship flight is a big deal for Starlink:

• Each Starship launch of Starlink equals at least one month of Falcon 9 launches, in his estimate.

• Flight 14 deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites. He expects Flight 15 to carry the same number or more. Starship can fit up to 60.

• Each Starlink V3 satellite has 10 times the downlink capacity of the V2 Mini satellites that Falcon 9 launches about every 3 days.

• Put together, he says Flight 15 alone would equal 1 to 2+ months of Falcon 9 launches in added Starlink capacity.

In plain words: more capacity in orbit per launch means more Starlink customers served per dollar spent. That is the cost-decline engine behind the whole SpaceX story.

Context: This Builds on Jonas’s “Cheap and Getting Cheaper” Call

This is Jonas’s second Starship-focused note in about a week. In a note dated Sunday, Oct 4, titled “SPCX $159: Cheap and Getting Cheaper,” he:

• He: Reiterated Overweight with a $300 target, arguing SpaceX looks expensive on headline multiples but cheap once its growth is factored in. At $300, he estimated the stock would trade at about 0.6 times his growth-adjusted measure, roughly in line with Amazon and below Alphabet and Meta (Investing.com, Benzinga).

• Told investors the weeks before Flight 15 are “a unique opportunity to buy shares that look unusually cheap,” and said a successful ship catch “could be the biggest positive catalyst since the IPO” (Benzinga; The Clarity).

• Listed other catalysts: Q3 results in late October, Flight 16 before year end, new Grok model releases and more AI compute (neocloud) deals (Investing.com; TheStreet).

• Gave Flight 14 a B+ (TheStreet).

• Put a bear case on the table: if AI momentum slows, Starship hits a serious setback or SpaceX needs a large equity raise, the stock could fall toward $100 within 12 months (TheStreet).

Where the rest of Wall Street sits: Barclays started SPCX at Overweight with a $254 target on Oct 8 to 9. TipRanks showed an average target of $235.10 at the time of the Oct 4 note. Jonas’s $300 is at the top of the pack.

The stock since that note: SPCX closed at $158.96 on Oct 2, jumped to $171.09 on Oct 5, the first trading day after the note, and closed the week at $162.57 on Oct 9 (Yahoo Finance). The same week, SpaceX agreed to buy Grain Management’s nationwide 800 MHz spectrum for Starlink Mobile, pending FCC approval (Grain press release, Oct 8).

Why It Matters

• Starship reusability is the whole ballgame. The booster has been caught. The upper stage (the ship) has not yet been proven reusable. A ship catch would move Starship from test program to a fully reusable launch system, the step that unlocks the “order of magnitude” cost drop Jonas describes.

• Starlink capacity scales with Starship. The V3 satellites Jonas describes fly on Starship, not Falcon 9. More Starship flights mean more capacity for Starlink broadband, Starlink Mobile and the new 800 MHz spectrum.

• This lines up with ARK Invest’s framework. ARK’s Big Ideas 2026 expects launch costs to fall about 17% for every cumulative doubling of mass sent to orbit (Wright’s Law). That is ARK’s forecast, not ours, but Jonas’s “further order of magnitude” point is the same idea.

What to Watch

1. Starship Flight 15, about a month out (late October to early November). Key question: does SpaceX attempt, and land, a ship catch?

2. SpaceX Q3 results, expected late October.

3. FCC review of the 800 MHz spectrum deal.

4. Flight 16, targeted before year end.

OUR VIEW

Short term (weeks): test flights can go wrong, and Starship has had failures before. The stock has swung between about $145 and $172 in the last two weeks alone. A failed or delayed Flight 15 could pull it back, and Jonas’s own bear case is $100. IMHO $SPCX along with $TSLA have the best risk vs reward profiles in the world.

Long term (5 years): this is exactly why SPCX is in our APEX 10 and our Holy Trinity.

• Fully reusable Starship plus Starlink V3 is a cost-decline machine: cheaper launches, more capacity per flight, more customers per dollar. Price targets are opinions. The business is the thesis. We keep dollar cost averaging, and volatility is vitality.

GOAT Quote of the Day

“Charlie and I view the marketable common stocks that Berkshire owns as interests in businesses, not as ticker symbols to be bought or sold based on their ‘chart’ patterns, the ‘target’ prices of analysts or the opinions of media pundits.”

Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway 2017 Chairman’s Letter

Why it matters today: a $300 target makes headlines, but we own SpaceX for what Starship and Starlink can do over five years, not for any one analyst’s number.