Elon Musk has been in the spotlight in recent months for a number of reasons, besides her business and various whims. After a short forced break in July put it back section plus bitcoin; He announced at a Tesla event in August that the automaker robotics development age; in September They are getting stronger Concerned voices about the super-internet from the Starlink satellite; And in October it was expected to be world trillionaire.
Meanwhile, the public debate over private space research, which reached $100 billion in early October and became the world’s second-largest private company, wasn’t really its topic – Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin attracted attention with amazing promotions like Captain Kirk on a space flight.
Nobody Leaked to CNBC Internal correspondence revealed that with 100 billion valuations here or there, things at SpaceX won’t go the way Musk expects. In an email sent to all company employees on November 26, he wrote: “The Raptor production crisis is much more severe than it seemed a few weeks ago. (…) We are in real danger of bankruptcy if we cannot get the spacecraft to fly at least once every two weeks. next year.”
Starship is the next-generation rocket system that SpaceX will use to enable interplanetary travel – first to the Moon and then to Mars. Prototypes tested with slight hops at the company’s Texas headquarters were equipped with just three Raptor engines, but in order to launch the giant’s orbit around Earth, at least 39 Raptors must be equipped with each prototype — not to mention the final versions that are ready to carry freight and passengers. However, this required a significant increase in gear production.
Musk’s letter also confirms that SpaceX’s vice president of engines, Will Heltsley, left the company in early November due to Raptor production being much slower than expected, and weeks of investigations have revealed that the situation is more dire than previously thought. So much so that Musk, wanting in vain for the long Thanksgiving holiday, preferred to line up for production, because “we need all hands to get this situation back, which is frankly disastrous.”
The company’s president spoke on November 17 of his hope that the Starship could orbit the Earth as early as January or February, and that would mostly depend on permission from the US aviation authority. He also said he wasn’t sure if the Starship had been launched for the first time, but he was sure the rocket would reach space in 2022. He has revealed so much about the financial details of the development that it is at least 90 percent self-financed and is not prepared to need international cooperation. or external sources.
In addition to the Starship, the Starlink project will also be affected by the Raptor manufacturing problems, although since the satellites launched so far have been handled by the Falcon 9 rocket, the next generation of satellites will only be delivered by larger and larger. Powerful missile. Essentially, Musk also described in his email that the Starlink antennas are already planned to produce millions of pieces per year, but that they will all be rendered useless if the raptors are not produced at the correct speed.
Related articles on Qubit:
