Over the holiday weekend, CEO Musk sent a nightmare email to employees that warned them of a crisis with its engine production that could lead to the company's bankruptcy. The email was obtained by Space Explored, CNBC, and The Verge and urged employees to work over the weekend in order to increase production of the engine.
The production crisis of the Raptors is worse than it was a few weeks ago, according to Musk. The issues that we have dug into following the exit of prior senior management have turned out to be much more severe than was reported. There is no way to sugarcoat this.
Musk did send out a message about the report Tuesday afternoon.
The magnitude of the program is not appreciated. It is designed to extend life to Mars and the moon, which requires 1000 times more payload than all current Earth rockets combined. Musk spoke to the content of the email and said that it wasn't impossible, even though he didn't believe it was likely. The CEO wrote that only the paranoid survive.
In his email, Musk urged workers to cut their holiday weekend short and called for all hands on deck to recover from what is, quite frankly, a disaster. If the company can't get Starship flights to run once every two weeks in 2022, it could face bankruptcy. Musk has previously spoken about times when both Musk and his company were on the verge of bankruptcy. Musk claimed that the company came within a few digits of insolvency in the last year.
A critical component of the project is the engine of Raptor. It is critical that Starship meet these ambitious goals in order to build on the success of Musk's promise of multi-planetary human exploration. According to Musk, Starlink will use Starship to launch their next- generation satellites.
The CEO admitted earlier this month that the Raptor 2 would need a complete redesign to make multi-planetary life possible. CNBC reported that two vice presidents left the company. Will Heltsley, who had been at the company since 2009, was taken off due to a lack of progress on the Raptor project.
The news comes near the end of a great year for the company. In 11 months, the company launched 25 successful Falcon 9 missions, sent a dozen astronauts to space, and drew a plan to mass commercialization with its Starlink satellite internet service.
The full email can be read over at The Verge.
