Elon Musk’s Bold Claim: “In 4 Or 5 Years” SpaceX Will “Launch Every Hour”

on Apr 02, 2026

As SpaceX nears being traded publicly, Elon Musk says his company is preparing to be able to launch rockets on an hourly basis in the next few years. (Photo credit: SpaceX, and Graeme Sloan / The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The Tech Leader Touted SpaceX’s Potential As The Company Nears Being Publicly Traded

Ahead of the historic launch on Wednesday, April 1, of NASA’s Artemis II mission, sending astronauts around the Moon for the first time since the 1972 Apollo 17 mission, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk made a bold claim.

In a March 31 post on X, formerly Twitter, a user of the social media platform remarked that “the pace SpaceX is launching is just insane,” adding, “For the rest of the space industry, it takes months or years to pull off one launch.”

The X user went on to note that SpaceX had launched two of its reusable Falcon 9 rockets in a single day, on March 30.

To this, Musk replied, “In 4 or 5 years, there will be a launch every hour.”

See the post and response by Musk, here:

In 4 or 5 years, there will be a launch every hour https://t.co/dipVNmkuQQ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 31, 2026

This statement comes as SpaceX, on April 1, reportedly filed confidentially for an initial public offering (IPO) on the stock exchange.

Presently, it is believed the company’s listing could be record-setting, coming in at $1.75 trillion and bringing in up to $75 billion to the company, according to Bloomberg.

SpaceX is expected to begin being publicly traded in June.

How Elon Musk’s Claims Of Hourly Rocket Launches Could Become A Reality

Back in February, Elon Musk responded to a similar post, stating that it could be as early as three years from now, in 2029, that SpaceX could be conducting hourly launches.

In 2026, as of April 2, SpaceX has managed to outpace all rocket launches on Earth, with Flight Atlas citing 40 rocket launches conducted by SpaceX, compared to 33 globally.

*As of April 2, 2026, SpaceX has launched 40 rockets, compared to 33 being launched by every other space entity on Earth. (Image: Flight Atlas)*

Speaking with Time Magazine in an article published on March 26, Gwynne Shotwell, the president and COO of SpaceX, said, “We launched 165 times last year [in 2025]. This year, maybe 140, 145-ish, yeah.”

She went on to note that, in 2025, approximately 85% of all rocket launches in the United States were conducted by SpaceX.

This number is largely attributed to Falcon 9 launches to bring Starlink satellites into orbit, with the internet provider being part of SpaceX.

With the Falcon 9 rockets, the first-stage booster is reusable, with the rockets landing after launch. SpaceX reports that it has conducted 621 launches of Falcon 9, with 575 completed landings since the first successful landing in 2015.

Looking ahead, Shotwell cited the rise of SpaceX’s Starship program.

So far, there have been 11 Starship launches since 2023, with five of those launches ending in failure.

Speaking on Starship to Time Magazine, Shotwell said:

“Starlink basically created this incredible demand for Falcon 9, and the AI satellites will do the same for Starship launches. The reason why that is both exciting and important is the more you put something into production, the more consistent the product is, the more consistent the operation, the safer. So having that gigantic demand is incredibly important to us. And then ultimately, I think [Starship] will be moving humans.”

The Starship, she said, could transport up to 300 people per flight in the near future.

With SpaceX poised to begin being publicly traded in June, this move has significant advantages for the company.

The New York Times reported that funds brought in by SpaceX being publicly traded could bolster the company’s longterm goals, including the establishing of a colony on the Moon and launching A.I. data centers as satellites into Earth’s orbit.

Earlier in 2026, SpaceX requested permission from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch approximately 1 million solar‑powered satellites designed to serve as an “orbital data-center system.”

This data center, if approved, will be the first of its kind, according to SpaceX’s application, to “harness the Sun’s full power.”

Of course, transporting humans to Mars is also a goal of SpaceX, but the near future has the company set to have its Starship HLS (which stands for Human Landing System) being used in NASA’s Artemis III in 2027.

Keep up with SpaceX’s scheduled launches at its website, here.

Watch the Falcon 9 rocket’s booster land after launching the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station in 2024, here: