Does it really count as working all weekend if you make a quick appearance on the factory line and then go back to your house and party with a bunch of barely legal women smuggled across the border that you pass out in lieu of bonuses.

Elon Musk

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Elon Musk tells SpaceX employees that Starship engine crisis is creating a ‘risk of bankruptcy’

Elon Musk described a dire situation with SpaceX’s development of Raptor rocket engines the day after Thanksgiving in a companywide email, a copy of which was obtained by CNBC.

“The Raptor production crisis is much worse than it seemed a few weeks ago,” Musk wrote.

“We face genuine risk of bankruptcy if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year,” Musk added later.

Starship is the massive, next-generation rocket SpaceX is developing to launch cargo and people on missions to the moon and Mars. The company is testing prototypes at a facility in southern Texas and has flown multiple short test flights. But to move to orbital launches, the rocket prototypes will need as many as 39 Raptor engines each – necessitating a sharp ramp in engine production.

Musk’s email to SpaceX employees provides more context to the significance of the departure of former Vice President of Propulsion Will Heltsley earlier this month. Heltsley had been taken off Raptor development before he left, CNBC reported, with Musk noting in his email that the company’s leadership has been digging into the program’s problems since then – and discovering the circumstances “to be far more severe” than Musk previously thought. – Source

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