By which flight will SpaceX successfully recover both Starship and its Booster?
💡 What the odds say
Most likely: 20 at about a 80% chance — likely.
The field is highly concentrated on Flight 20 at 80%, with Flight 16 and 15 as the only other serious contenders, but the recent Flight 12 and 13 results show that booster recovery remains the critical bottleneck, making the 80% on Flight 20 seem aggressive given the historical failure rate on booster landings.
📊 Base rate: SpaceX has successfully recovered a Starship booster on zero of its first 12 flights (0% base rate), and the company's Falcon 9 booster landing success rate is about 90% after many attempts, but Starship is a much larger and more complex system, so the prior for a first successful recovery is low.
What's driving it
- • Flight 12 in May 2026 lost the booster on return despite validating V3 reentry systems (SpaceQ, May 24), showing that booster landing is still the hardest part.
- • Flight 13 is imminent with a static fire test of all 33 engines on the booster (space.com, Jul 10), and if it succeeds in landing, it would dramatically shift odds toward earlier flights.
- • The market structure rewards early success: if they succeed on Flight 13, then Flight 14, 15, etc. all resolve Yes, so the high odds on Flight 20 partly reflect the cumulative probability that they fail on all earlier flights.
Why the front-runners lead
- • Flight 20 leads at 80% because it is the farthest-out flight with a defined number, so it captures all probability that success occurs on any flight from 20 onward, including flights not yet listed.
- • Flight 16 at 39% and Flight 15 at 30% are the next best bets because they are the closest flights after the current test campaign that have a realistic chance of success, given that Flight 12 and 13 are still unproven.
- • The V3 Starship design showed improved reentry performance on Flight 12 (Ars Technica, May 23), suggesting that the vehicle is converging on a working system, which supports the view that success is likely within a few more flights.
Why it's still open
- • The 80% on Flight 20 is vulnerable because SpaceX has never successfully landed a Starship booster in 12 attempts, and the base rate for such a complex new system is far lower than 80%.
- • Flight 13 or 14 could succeed and collapse the odds on Flight 20, as the market resolves all later flights Yes if success happens earlier, making the current 80% a bet on continued failure through Flight 19.
- • The booster loss on Flight 12 (TechCrunch, May 22) despite V3 upgrades shows that the landing problem is not solved yet, and a similar failure on Flight 13 would keep the odds concentrated on later flights.
What to watch
- • Flight 13 launch, expected within weeks of the July 10 static fire test (space.com, Jul 10): a successful booster landing would shift probability massively to Flight 13 and earlier flights, while a failure would reinforce the current odds on Flight 20.
- • Flight 14 and 15 launches, likely later in 2026: each successive failure pushes the expected success flight number higher, while each success resolves the market early.
- • Any announcement of a new flight number or schedule change by SpaceX: adding a Flight 21 or delaying Flight 20 would directly affect the 80% probability on that answer.
AI-generated · grounded in recent news + odds · informational only, not advice. Verify on the source platform.
Data from Manifold’s public API, for informational purposes only. PredictPal is not affiliated with any platform and does not facilitate trading.
Discussion
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How it resolves
Resolved by whoever created the market, at their discretion per the question's description. It's play-money (Mana) and not tied to an official source — treat it as a community forecast.
Resolution criteria
Both must be on solid ground or a landing ship, mostly intact, and stationary, on the same flight. Starship must have flown to over 100 km on that flight. For details, this question will use the same criteria as these: @/chrisjbillington/will-spacex-land-a-spaceflown-stars @/chrisjbillington/will-spacex-land-a-super-heavy-boos @/EvanDaniel/which-happens-first-starship-superh Answers are for "on or before flight number X", so if they succeed on flight 11, then answers 11, 12, 13, etc. all resolve Yes, regardless of the outcome of flight 12. I'll add more answers as future flights approach, as indicated by prices on existing answers.
ⓘ A market settles under its own written rules, which can lag what looks decided in the news — so the price may not move to 100% the moment an outcome seems obvious.
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