Musk warns employees of potential SpaceX bankruptcy
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk warned him employees over the holiday that the company is facing growing crisis with it’s Raptor engine production that, if unsolved, could result in the company’s bankruptcy.
In a serious effort to increase production of the engine meant to power its next-generation Starship launch vehicle, 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, for the fact that the company could face bankruptcy if it can’t get Starship flights to run once every two weeks in 2022.
As such, the situation is getting worse, having a production crisis of the Raptors, 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.
“Unfortunately, the Raptor production crisis is much worse than it seemed a few weeks ago,” Musk wrote. “As we have dug into the issues following exiting prior senior management, they have unfortunately turned out to be far more severe than was reported. There is no way to sugarcoat this,” he added.
Musk has previously talked about times when his company and himself were on the verge of bankruptcy. He claimed that the company came within a few digits of insolvency in the last year.
“The magnitude of the Starship program is not widely appreciated” Musk said. “It is designed to extend life to Mars (and the moon), which requires ~1000 times more payload to orbit than all current Earth rockets combined.”
Though Musk did not confirm or deny the email’s accuracy, he stressed he did not believe bankruptcy was likely, however, it wasn’t impossible either.
According to Musk’s email, Starship will also play a critical role in launching Star link’s next-generation satellites into orbit.
It is worth mentioning that Raptor’s engine is a critical component of Starship, which SpaceX hopes will one-day transport cargo and people to the moon and Mars.