One of the most unusual businesses in space starts with a Cold War fighter jet.
Starfighters Space operates the world’s only Mach 2+ commercial fleet—a handful of F-104 Starfighters flown by a small cadre of pilots. Could these aircraft help shape America’s future in space?
The company recently went public, and I wanted to understand the business behind the speed.
I sat down with CEO Tim Franta to discuss where space technology is heading, how companies fund their ambitions, and why he chose to take Starfighters Space public. We also explored how SpaceX has reshaped the industry—opening doors while making life harder for others.
An unconventional company. A high-stakes market. And a fighter jet with another mission.
What You’ll Discover In This Episode
- How one pilot turned a fleet of 60-year old jets into a space company
- Setting the world record for rate of climb
- Why many small space projects are now getting funded
- How inexpensive component testing can save $250 million satellites
- Where they find pilots in during a pilot shortage
- Why they’re building a ‘Wind Tunnel in the Sky’
- Ripple effects of SpaceX and Blue Origin pulling out of ridesharing
More From This Episode
The FAQs and topics below cover the full range of what Tim Franta, CEO of Starfighters Space, discusses with Craig Picken in this episode of the Aerospace Executive podcast.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Starfighters Space do, and what makes it unusual in aerospace?
Starfighters Space is a publicly traded micro-cap company based at Kennedy Space Center on Florida’s Space Coast. It flies a fleet of F-104 Starfighter jets to support aerospace and defense research, development, testing, and evaluation. CEO Tim Franta says it is the only operator that can sustain Mach 2 flight, so it sits at the fast end of the aviation spectrum. It also plans to fly one of the smallest orbital rockets, which puts it at the small end of the launch spectrum. Franta describes the company as an R&D and test-and-evaluation business, not a launch “trucking company” that delivers payloads to orbit.
How did Starfighters Space come to operate F-104s from Kennedy Space Center?
According to Franta, the company’s founder acquired a single F-104 in the mid-1990s and kept adding aircraft. He was able to do this because the Canadian, Italian, and US governments trusted him, and because those governments wanted the F-104’s speed capability preserved. Franta was then chief of staff at the Florida Space Authority and helped keep the company from relocating to Chattanooga, Tennessee. He did this by helping it secure a NASA SPACE Act Agreement and access to the Shuttle Landing Facility, which he says was the fastest SPACE Act Agreement he ever saw signed. Franta later joined the company as its leader. Around 2018 the company decided to stop doing air shows and focus on research, development, testing, and evaluation.
Why is the F-104 useful for hypersonic and Mach 2 testing?
Franta says hypersonic missiles fly through the atmosphere, can change direction, and are surrounded by an ion cloud, which makes them much harder to track than ballistic missiles. He notes that the Pentagon moved from a few large, single-launch programs to a more incremental approach with many test paths for components, units, and materials. Mach 2 is a critical regime on the way to Mach 5, because ramjets and scramjets begin to engage there. Starfighters is a subcontractor on a five-year, roughly $5 billion Kratos-led program that Franta calls Mach 2. He also says the company lit igniters under the wing at Mach 2.02 for GE Aerospace, which he describes as a world first. He expects hypersonics work to be a stable source of business for about the next ten years.
What is “Wind Tunnel in the Sky”?
Wind Tunnel in the Sky is a Starfighters Space test pod carried under the F-104’s wing, and Franta says the company began building it after inbound customer interest in February. The pod has a radio-transparent nose cone for avionics or cameras, body sections for inlets, sensors, and control surfaces, and a tail section for tail configurations and igniters. Franta says it lets customers fly their actual control computer against real airflow at Mach 2. He says ground supersonic wind tunnels have wait lists of nearly a year, require customers to buy a full week of team time, and offer only seconds of test time. He says a single F-104 flight can yield five to ten minutes of Mach 2 data at altitude, and that scale can be much closer to full size than the roughly 1-to-72 scale of typical tunnel models. The company is also moving toward flying two non-conflicting payloads on one mission, and one customer plans to fly the same payload under both wings.
What are Starfighters Space’s plans for orbital launch and a second aircraft?
Franta says the company’s first rocket, Star Launch One, is a standard suborbital vehicle offering about ten minutes of microgravity. Star Launch Two is planned to reach low Earth orbit, with a specialty in very low Earth orbit for customers who need only about three months to two years in space. Satellites in that orbit fall back and burn up, which he says helps limit space debris. The F-104 can reach suborbital space but cannot carry enough mass for orbital launch. So the company plans to acquire a second, slightly slower, twin-engine aircraft that can carry more weight. Franta declined to name the aircraft, saying it is already in the company’s public Regulation A filing and that he cannot comment while related activity is underway. He also says the F-104 fleet will not last more than about fifteen years.
How does Starfighters Space maintain 60-year-old F-104 aircraft?
Franta says the F-104 is very simple, essentially a jet engine, a fuel tank, and a pilot, and that it flies more on thrust than lift. The company does all maintenance in-house except engine overhaul, which it sends out. Because missions are short, the engines accumulate few hours. Franta says the company holds enough spare parts for about the next ten years and could 3D print parts if needed. It owns the tire molds, which are held at Dunlop in England. Tires are its main consumable, since the jets get only six or seven landings per set, and fewer if brakes or the parachute are used. Franta says the three-mile Kennedy Space Center runway helps by letting the aircraft roll out without heavy braking.
How large is the Starfighters fleet, and how often does it fly?
Franta says the company has seven flyable F-104s and keeps about three flying at any given time. The single-seat S model is the fastest and is used for sustained Mach 2 missions and air launch. The two-seat model is slightly slower because of a larger fuel tank and the second seat, and it is used when a passenger must operate a switch or watch data. Missions are short, under about 25 minutes for the Mach 2 ignition flights and under 45 minutes for others. Franta’s ideal week is training and briefings on Monday, flights on Tuesday, and Friday held as a weather backup. He says the company has flown four flights in one week, and that the flight rate is increasing. Franta says the aircraft holds the world rate-of-climb record and can climb to about 30,000 feet in around 30 seconds.
Who flies the F-104 for Starfighters Space, and how does it recruit pilots?
Franta says the company currently has two pilots. The lead is Piercarlo Ciocchi, who flew the F-104 with the Italian Air Force and whom Franta calls the world-leading expert on the aircraft. Franta says the company trains additional pilots because it cannot have single or double points of failure. He says drones have reduced pilot seats in the Air Force and National Guard units, which leaves plenty of experienced pilots with 10 to 15 years of experience available to recruit, even though entry-level pilot pipelines remain competitive. He also says test pilots and former astronauts are interested. In his view they want missions with a real purpose, not joyrides, and he values a team with mixed Air Force, Navy, and NASA backgrounds.
Why did Starfighters Space go public instead of staying private?
Franta gives several reasons: space is an emerging industry that needs a lot of capital, and he does not want venture capitalists who know nothing about space running the business. He also says the market should have small and mid-cap space companies alongside giants such as SpaceX and, eventually, Blue Origin. He says the listing gives access to public and private financing, including money for new aircraft. He says the company is funded for three flights, whether successes or failures, and also earns revenue during development. He adds that public investors force management to justify spending. He notes that inbound customer calls began around February, near the time of the listing, though he describes that as a correlation, not a cause.
How is Starfighters Space different from other launch companies, and how does it price its services?
Franta says Starfighters is not vertically integrated and never will be. It uses about 20 in-house staff plus an integration firm with about 30 engineers, and it favors off-the-shelf, space-certified hardware such as an existing flight termination system to reduce risk and cost. It aims not to duplicate existing services or reinvent the wheel, and does not intend to undercut competitors to push them out. He says customers can test components such as batteries, antennas, or micro thrusters without risking a satellite worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He expects insurers such as Lloyd’s of London and German reinsurers to value that. On pricing, he says the first-stage aircraft costs are well understood down to insurance, maintenance, and hangar fees. The rocket is designed for operations and scale, with the aim of ordering vehicles in groups of six or twelve after the first few flights to bring costs down. He says Starfighters and EXOS are unusually transparent about pricing.
How is the commercial space market changing, and how does that affect Starfighters Space?
Franta says launch cadence at the Space Coast has grown by more than an order of magnitude, from about 12 launches around 2013 or 2014 to over 150 last year. He says the market is large in dollars but has relatively few players. He says SpaceX has canceled its rideshare program for multiple unrelated payloads and that Blue Origin appears to have stopped New Shepard, which affects where small-payload customers can find rides. He estimates the small-payload market is about 50 percent defense, 30 percent commercial, and 20 percent academic research. He says Starfighters has around 400 flyable leads and is actively pursuing about 70. He also says the Department of Defense industrial base survey has flagged the Mach 2 capability as one that must be maintained, though this has not yet turned into contracts.
Key People, Companies & Topics Mentioned
- Tim Franta — CEO of Starfighters Space and the episode’s guest; formerly chief of staff at the Florida Space Authority and a helper of the company’s early NASA agreements.
- Craig Picken — Host of the Aerospace Executive podcast, who conducts the interview.
- Starfighters Space — Publicly traded micro-cap company at Kennedy Space Center operating F-104s for research, testing, and small-payload launch.
- Kelly Johnson — Designer of the F-104, whose “design a little, build a little, test a little, fly a little” approach Franta says the company follows.
- F-104 Starfighter — The Mach 2-capable aircraft flown by the company; two of the fleet are Canadian, per Franta.
- Kennedy Space Center / Shuttle Landing Facility — Company’s home base and its three-mile runway with 1,000-foot overruns.
- NASA and the SPACE Act Agreement — Mechanism that gave the company access to Kennedy and its first NASA mission.
- Thomas Flight Safety System — Payload flown on the company’s first NASA mission, now used on Rocket Lab rockets from Wallops.
- Florida Space Authority — Franta’s former employer, which helped build the hangar and office building the company now uses.
- Kratos — Prime contractor on the roughly $5 billion Mach 2 hypersonics program where Starfighters is a subcontractor.
- GE Aerospace — Customer for the Mach 2.02 igniter test.
- Air Force Research Laboratory and Defense Innovation Unit — Government organizations Franta says created more test opportunities as hypersonics grew in importance.
- Department of Defense industrial base survey — Annual survey Franta says has flagged the Mach 2 capability as one that must be maintained.
- Wind Tunnel in the Sky — Under-wing test pod for flying avionics, inlets, control surfaces, tails, and igniters at Mach 2.
- Star Launch One and Star Launch Two — The company’s planned suborbital and orbital rockets.
- Very low Earth orbit — Orbit the company plans to specialize in, to limit space debris.
- FAA — Regulator notified when the company modifies aircraft or flies non-certified shapes.
- SpaceX — Referenced for lowering barriers to commercial space, canceling its rideshare program, and its planned move to Starship.
- Blue Origin and New Shepard — Franta says New Shepard appears unlikely to return.
- Redwire and Firefly — Craig mentions them as public space-company examples.
- Small satellites and suborbital payloads — Market driving demand for the company’s launch plans.
- Test pilots and pilot supply — Discussion of recruiting from the Air Force, Navy, NASA, and National Guard.
- Micro-cap public space companies and access to capital — Discussion of why the company listed publicly.
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