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Elon Musk has responded to reports that he sent a Black Friday email to SpaceX employees urging them to work over the weekend on the company’s spacecraft engines.
The SpaceX founder informed employees in an email, which was first reported by Space Explored on Monday, that production of the Raptor engine line was in “crisis.”
Musk said SpaceX faced a “real risk of bankruptcy” if production was not scaled up enough to support enough flights of its new reusable Starship rocket in 2021.
Musk said SpaceX will need “all hands on deck” over Thanksgiving weekend and intends to spend the holidays on the Raptor production line himself.
On November 30, Musk tweeted: “The magnitude of the Starship program is not widely appreciated. It is designed to extend life to Mars (and the Moon), which requires ~1000 times more payload in orbit than all current Earth rockets.”
In another tweet in response to the leaked email report, Musk said: “If a severe global recession were to dry up capital availability/liquidity, while SpaceX was losing billions on Starlink and Starship, bankruptcy, while still unlikely, Not impossible.”
The SpaceX founder added historical examples to support his response. He continued: “GM and Chrysler BK [went bankrupt] in the last recession.”
He has not yet denied the authenticity of the email, saying it originated from himself.
The Starship rocket is a part of SpaceX’s Starship project, which includes a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry satellites and other technology to low-Earth orbit and beyond. If everything goes according to plan, Starship will take humans to the Moon and eventually to Mars.
In April, NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to develop Starship as a lunar lander to carry crew to the lunar surface as soon as 2024. The Verge reported that prototype tests are underway in Boca Chica, Texas, but that the craft has not yet reached low-Earth orbit.
Speaking to the National Academy of Sciences on November 17, Musk said SpaceX hopes to launch the ship on its first orbital flight in January or February. But the Black Friday email indicated that SpaceX is banking on more frequent flights if the project is to be viable.
The email reportedly read: “It comes down to, if we fail to achieve Starship flight rates at least once every two weeks next year, we face a real risk of bankruptcy. “
This further indicated that it was at risk due to production delays with the Raptor engine.
The Raptor engine is an important part of this starship system. The engine is designed to use methalox, a compound that contains methane. One of the advantages of Methlox is that, unlike other rocket fuels, it does not leave any residue on engines, which aids in their reuse.
Additionally, it is possible that methalox could be built on Mars, meaning that astronauts could use in-situ resources to travel from the Red Planet back to Earth.
Test flights for the Raptor engine began in 2019 when it became the first full-flow staged combustion rocket engine ever built.
Musk’s email continued: “Unfortunately, the Raptor production crisis is much worse than it was a few weeks ago. As we have seen the issues after the exit of former senior management, unfortunately, they have turned out to be far more serious than reported. There’s no way to put sugar in it.”
SpaceXplore suggested that the exit from senior management in the email is a reference to former SpaceX senior vice president, Will Heltsley. According to a report from CNBC, Haltsley left SpaceX due to a lack of progress in Raptor production.
Musk ended his response to the email with a quote from Hungarian-American businessman, engineer, and Intel Corporation CEO Andrew Stephen Grove. The quote makes up the title of a book on business by Grove.
If a severe global recession were to dry up capital availability / liquidity while SpaceX was losing billions on Starlink & Starship, then bankruptcy, while still unlikely, is not impossible.
GM & Chrysler went BK last recession.
“Only the paranoid survive.” – Grove
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 30, 2021