“What it comes down to, is that we face a genuine risk of bankruptcy if we can’t achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year,” wrote Elon Musk.
The billionaire repeatedly mentioned the “Raptor production crisis”. With the loss of 3 key employees, Musk was reviewing the status of production of the Raptor engine used in SpaceX’s Starship. And he discovered that SpaceX has massive engineering obstacles to overcome.
“As we have dug into the issues following the exiting of prior senior management, they have unfortunately turned out to be far more severe than was reported. There is no way to sugarcoat this.”
His email went out the Friday after Thanksgiving. And he asked for all “hands-on-deck solutions”. All SpaceX employees were requested to return to work immediately. He was insisting the entire company be by his side. Helping him solve the Raptor production crisis.
SpaceX needs to produce enough Raptor engines to launch Starships every two weeks in 2022.
If SpaceX doesn’t overcome the Raptor production crisis, they won’t be able to launch the number of satellites planned for Starlink.
