At DFJ Growth, we’ve had the privilege of supporting some of the most ambitious technology companies in history. SpaceX, which we have been partnered with since 2009, continues to redefine what’s possible in spaceflight. The company recently achieved a critical milestone in its Starship program — the third successful catch of its Super Heavy booster at Starbase — one of the two major components of a fully reusable launch system.
To put this into perspective, the Super Heavy booster is a towering 23 stories tall—roughly the height of the Statue of Liberty including its pedestal. Consistently catching this massive first stage booster, powered by 33 Raptor engines, in the “chopsticks” tower marks a major step toward making spaceflight as routine as commercial air travel. The next major milestone is to demonstrate the successful orbital launch and landing of the Starship second stage.
While the Starship program is still in its test phase, the ability to consistently recover and reuse the booster is an essential achievement. SpaceX’s vision of rapid, low-cost space access depends on these precision landings, which reduce turnaround time between launches and dramatically lower the cost of accessing space through reusability.
Just as Falcon 9’s reusable first stage boosters transformed the economics of launching satellites and crewed missions, the success of the Super Heavy recovery paves the way for a future where Starship enables large-scale deep-space missions, lunar landings, and eventually, the colonization of Mars. The SpaceX team also envisions Starship as a future hypersonic airliner with the ability to fly 100 passengers between any two cities around the globe in 45 minutes or less.
At DFJ Growth, we invest in companies that push the limits of what’s possible. SpaceX’s focus on first principles engineering and a relentless drive to iterate, test, and improve embodies the spirit of frontier innovation. We’re excited to watch as the Starship program continues to progress, bringing humanity one step closer to a truly multiplanetary future.
