Elon Musk warns Starship engines could bankrupt SpaceX [Update]

SpaceX faces a sincere “bankruptcy risk” if the spacecraft cannot fly every two weeks in 2022, Elon Musk has warned employees, blaming the production challenges of rocket machines and management crisis for ultimatum surprises. Starship was set not only to take the Artemis NASA mission to the moon later this decade and, beyond that, the mission to Mars, besides being an important part of spacex products itself such as Satellite Starlink Internet services.

This is also much larger than any spacex launched until now. Standing around 400 feet tall and a diameter of 30 feet, it was larger than Saturn V and rated NASA in the end bringing more than 220,000 pounds of cargo to outside.

As you would expect, then, such space requires some serious propulsion. For that SpaceX uses its raptor machine, powered by fuels known as “methalox” – a combination of liquid methane cryogenic and liquid oxygen – because it exceeds twice the 1D Merlin engine encouragement which is currently used for Falcon 9 and heavy Falcon. One spacecraft can require as many as 39 raptor machines for each orbital launch.

At present, Starship has carried out far more flight tests than that, but the goal is to launch full, immediate orbitals. Actually, building enough raptor units for it is part of a clear musk concern.

In the email sent to SpaceX employees on Friday last week, the day after the US Thanksgiving holiday, Musk took the problem without uncertain conditions. “Unfortunately, the raptor production crisis was far worse than what looked a few weeks ago,” Email – seen by Space Explored and CNBC – read. “When we have explored the problem after leaving the previous senior management, they unfortunately it turned out to be much worse than reported. There is no way to cross this.”

While Musk did not refer to the “previous senior management” by name, it was believed to be a reference for Heltsley, among others. Previously, senior vice president of propulsion in SpaceX, Helsley left the company recently, CNBC reported, like Lee Rosen, vice president of the mission and operation launch. Rick Lim, who has been the director of the mission and launch of the senior director, also left.

Musk rarely avoided warning his team in Tesla that disaster was a real possibility, and his approach was the same as SpaceX. “We face a sincere risk of bankruptcy if we cannot reach Starship flight levels at least every two weeks next year,” he added, claiming that instead of taking a weekend, he would spend it on the Raptor route instead.

“Unless you have a critical family problem or can’t physically return to Hawthorne, we will need all the hands on the deck to recover from what happened, frankly, disaster,” insisting.

Starship is an important part of the SpaceX roadmap, it becomes a launch center for a number of different projects. On the one hand, it is the main element of the company’s big tone to NASA, helping win the Artemis landing contract that will see astronauts back to the moon. Beyond that, SpaceX has ambition to win the NASA Mars contract with the iteration of the same hardware.

However, for the spacex project itself, Starship is also very important. Starlink, satellite internet service company, currently uses Falcon 9 for deployment, but is limited to around 60 satellites at each launch. Starship can not only increase the amount exponentially, greatly accelerating deployment and thus the coverage of the service area in the field, but also plays a role in switching to Starlink Satellite V2.

The second generation design is, itself, the key to Starlink’s financial success. Musk has been upfront in the past that the initial hardware for internet services fell short of profitable; In fact, SpaceX lost money in every land terminal he sold. The new design has been in production, and SpaceX hopes to build a few million units every year, but for it is worthy of being a company requiring Starlink Satellite V2 to be in place.