The image is from a photo by Patrick PLEUL/POOL.
On Black Friday, Musk sent an email to his employees that said the production situation was a crisis and urged them to work over the weekend. The email, which was obtained by The Verge, states that the company faces a "genuine risk of bankruptcy" if production doesn't increase to support a high flight rate of the company's new Starship rocket next year.
The next-generation launch system, called Starship, will be powered by the massive methane engine called the Raptor. In April, NASA awarded a $2.9 billion contract to develop a lunar lander for the purpose of transporting astronauts to the Moon as early as 2025. The company has yet to launch the vehicle to space, but it has been hard at work developing and testing the prototypes.
According to a presentation given by Musk to the National Academies of Sciences, the first launch of Starship could be in January or February of 2022. According to Musk, the company needs to launch its spaceship at least once every two weeks next year. At the moment, the development of the Raptor engine is not on track.
I will be on the line all weekend.
Musk claimed in the email that after key senior management left the company, the issues surrounding Raptor production were far more severe than was reported. CNBC reported this month that two vice presidents, one of whom worked on the Raptor engine development, left the company.
Musk wrote in the email that he would be on the line all night and through the weekend, instead of taking a weekend off. He urged employees to come in for an all hands on deck situation if they had to return to Hawthorne because of family matters.
Musk stressed the vehicle's role in launching the company's next-generation Starlink satellites. Starlink is an ambitious initiative to launch a mega-constellation of nearly 12,000 satellites to provide broadband Internet coverage to users all over the Earth. According to a presentation given to the Federal Communication Commission by SpaceX, the company has launched more than 1,800 Starlink satellites and is currently serving over 130,000 users in more than 20 countries.
We need all hands on deck to recover from the disaster.
The first version of the Starlink satellites, known as V1, was launched by the company. Most of the satellites don't have lasers that allow them to communicate with one another. The Version 2 or V2 satellites will be much larger and will include laser communication. According to Musk, the only rocket that can launch these larger satellites is Starship.
Musk said that the mass to be used for satellite V2 was not enough, and that Satellite V1 was financially weak. In August, the FCC was updated with an amendment by the company that proposed changes to its satellites. In the email, Musk said that customers must buy user dishes in order to tap into the Starlink V2 satellites. The terminals will be useless if the new satellites are not ready to handle the bandwidth demand.
It is difficult to know if the company is in dire straights. A request for a comment from the company was not responded to. Musk has called on his employees to work long hours before. Musk claimed that his other company,Tesla, came close to collapse over production problems with the Model 3. Since then, the company's valuation has surpassed $1 trillion.
The entire email from Musk can be found below.
The production crisis of Raptors is worse than it was a few weeks ago. We dug into the issues after we exited senior management and they have turned out to be much more severe than we had reported. There is no way to sugarcoat this.
>
I was going to take this weekend off, but instead I will be on the line all night and through the weekend.
>
Unless you can't physically return to Hawthorne, we need all hands on deck to recover from what is a disaster.
>
If we can't get enough Raptors made, we can't fly Starship, which means we can't fly Starlink Satellite V2 which has neither the volume nor the mass needed for satellite V2). Satellite V1 is financially weak, whereas Satellite V2 is strong.
>
We are ramping up terminal production to several million units per year, which will consume massive capital, assuming that satellite V2 will handle the bandwidth demand. The terminals will be useless if not used correctly.
>
If we can't achieve a flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year, we face genuine risk of bankruptcy.
>
Thanks.
>
The man is named Elon.
