# The Rocket Is Not the Point By Peter Plötner (https://www.towardsjoyandpeace.com/about/) · Published 2026-09-15 Canonical: https://www.towardsjoyandpeace.com/essays/the-rocket-is-not-the-point/ Starship Flight 14, targeted for mid to late September 2026, is the first Starship flight meant to go into orbit, carrying about twenty of SpaceX's own Starlink V3 satellites, the product that already pays the company's bills. The essay argues the cargo matters more than the rocket: the Douglas DC-3 in 1936 was the first airliner that made money from passengers alone (American Airlines' first profit in years was 4,590 dollars), and profitable flight, not flight, is what changed the world. Then the personal turn: an aerospace engineer who launches rockets from South America on what happens in his head watching a competitor's stream. Two things, both true and both useful. The wish to be the one building it pushes you away from what you do not want; the awe pulls you toward what you do. Keltner's awe research (the small self) and the UCSF awe-walk study show how to find the second one on purpose. --- Starship leaving Starbase on its fifth flight test, October 2024. Photo: Steve Jurvetson, [CC BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/). Sometime this month Starship may reach orbit for the first time. Two things happen in my head when I watch. Both are true, and both are useful. By Peter Plötner. Aerospace engineer and Wayfinder Life Coach. More about Peter → SpaceX's Starship Flight 14 will try to put 20 Starlink satellites into orbit this month. It is the most powerful rocket ever built, and this is the first flight where the cargo pays: the satellites are SpaceX's own product, the one that already covers the company's bills. Everyone will watch the rocket. I think the cargo tells you more about the next 10 years. ## What Flight 14 is Thirteen Starships have flown. All thirteen went up and came back down on the same arc, into the ocean, on purpose. The last one, in July, released twenty Starlink satellites on the way down and then touched the water so gently that the ship stayed in one piece and kept sending data. Flight 14 is the first one meant to go into orbit. If it works, about twenty Starlink V3 satellites go into a real working orbit, and the ship comes home later. Each of those satellites can move about a terabit of data a second, from one box the size of a car. The date is a target. Starship dates slide, and the FAA still has to sign. ## Why the cargo matters more than the rocket The airplane was invented in 1903. For thirty years after that it was a toy, a weapon, and a way to move mail. Airlines lost money on every passenger and lived on government mail contracts. Then in 1936 the Douglas DC-3 arrived. It carried 21 people at 200 miles an hour, and for the first time an airline could make money from tickets alone. American Airlines showed its first profit in years that summer: 4,590 dollars. Three years later the DC-3 carried nine out of every ten airline passengers in the country. Flight did not change the world. Profitable flight did. Once a plane paid for itself with the people inside it, every airline on Earth wanted a hundred of them, and the rest of the century followed. Starship has been the airliner with no cabin. Flight 14 is the first flight where the cargo pays. SpaceX builds the rocket, and SpaceX builds the satellites, and the satellites are what earn the money. If the rocket that carries them can be flown again and again, the airline math starts over, ninety years later, one level up. ## The bigger thing under it Now widen the lens a little, because this is the part that made me want to write. In the same decade, three things are being built at once. A rocket that will be able to fly again the same day, like an airplane. AI that can plan, read, and fix things without a person watching. And humanoid robots, from a handful of young companies still competing for the lead. Figure's robot has already done an eleven-month shift in a BMW plant, helping build 30,000 cars, and its successor started a new job there in June. None of these is finished. But look at what they add up to if they land: a crew that does not need air, a pilot that does not need sleep, and a ride that does not get thrown away. That is what it takes to work on the Moon or Mars instead of visiting. And the money to build it comes from carrying data. The internet is the mail contract. The passengers come later, and my guess is they will not be people at first. They will be what the machines learn out there and send home. Knowledge is the cargo that could pay before anyone buys a ticket. Ten years feels optimistic and realistic to me for the first of it: machines doing paid work on the Moon, not just landing there. I do not know the exact date. I do know that the pieces are all on the table at the same time, for the first time, and that I get to be alive while they are. ## Two things happen when I watch I work on rockets. The one I work on carries the closest competitor to Starlink, which is good for competition and a real step toward the same goal. And still. When I watch a Starship stream, there is a part of me that would only be satisfied if I had built the whole thing myself, and it were the best in the world. Another part of me knows that nobody builds an orbital rocket alone. Not one person, ever. Both of those live in the same head. In eleventh grade I told my physics teacher I wanted to study aerospace engineering. She said mechanical engineering might be safer. Easier to get a job. Today I launch rockets from South America, and it is hard for me to picture a job closer to the moment a rocket leaves the ground than the one I have. So watching the same stream, my mind can go two ways. One: that rocket is launching without me, and the one I work on is not even the important one. Two: I would never have dreamed of being here, this is the start of commercial flight happening a second time, and I get to be part of it. Both are true. And here is what took me a while to see: both are useful. The awe gives you energy toward what you want. The wish to be the one building it pushes you away from what you do not want. Pull and push. Both move you. The only difference is which one shows up by itself. The wish does. The awe I have to go and find. There is a reason for that. When you work on something inspiring, everyone around you works on the same inspiring thing, and it feels normal fast. So keeping the awe is the practice. ## How to find the awe There is research on this, and it matches. Dacher Keltner's group at Berkeley ran five studies with over two thousand people on what awe does. The main finding: awe makes the self feel small. Not worse. Small. People who had just felt awe were more generous and made fairer choices. The self got quiet and the world got bigger. A team at UCSF then asked older adults to take a fifteen-minute walk once a week for eight weeks and look for things that amazed them. That was the whole instruction. By the end they felt less stressed day to day and more joy on the walks. They also took selfies along the way, and over the eight weeks they took up less and less of their own photos. They were pointing the camera at the world. That is the calm kind of flow. Doing the thing in front of you with ease, feeling part of something bigger. Awe is a fast way in, and a launch is the easiest awe there is. ## What I will do with Flight 14 I will watch it in awe, on purpose, whenever it flies. The biggest thing I can point my attention at this month, and eleven minutes of feeling small in the good way. The wish will show up on its own. It always does. I will let it push. You do not need a rocket for this. A launch just works for me. The walkers found it on a normal street. When was the last time something made you feel small in the good way? ## Frequently asked questions ### When is Starship Flight 14? The target is mid to late September 2026, from Starbase, Texas. FAA approval was still pending at the time of writing, and Starship dates slip often. ### What is different about Starship Flight 14? It is the first Starship flight meant to go into orbit, and the first to put Starlink satellites into a working orbit rather than release them on a suborbital test arc. All thirteen earlier flights came back down on the same arc they went up on. ### What is the DC-3 comparison about? The Douglas DC-3, delivered in 1936, was the first airliner that made money from passengers alone, without mail subsidies. It turned flying from a subsidized service into a business, and that is when it scaled. Starlink revenue on a reusable rocket may be the same turn for spaceflight. ### What does awe have to do with any of this? Research from Berkeley and UCSF shows awe makes the self feel smaller and reduces daily stress. It is the state that gives you energy toward what you want, as opposed to the wish to be somewhere else, which pushes you away from what you do not want. Both move you. ### How do I practice awe without a rocket? The UCSF study used a fifteen-minute weekly walk where people looked for things that amazed them. That was enough to measure a change in eight weeks. --- One thing that closes soon. I just earned my certification as a Wayfinder coach, and to mark it I am giving away my full 3 month coaching package to 1 person, free. It is the same package paying clients get: a session every 2 weeks, support in between by message or voice, and the method itself, so you can run it again on your own later. No homework. I read every application myself and they close on September 20. If the wish to be somewhere else shows up more often than the awe, the application is here and takes about 5 minutes. Two companions: Reusable Rockets, Disposable Joy on what the rocket business teaches about keeping the good feeling, and I Got to NASA. The Search Didn't End. on arriving at the place you dreamed of and still looking. If you want a first reading on which requirements you are running somebody else's version of, the Spec Check is 4 questions and takes about a minute.