With the progress in the development of Starship (composed of Ship spacecraft and the large Super Heavy rocket), SpaceX will need many Raptor motorcycle to be able to reach a cadence of profitable launches. To give an idea of the figures at stake: Ship needs 3 Raptor Atmospheric Engines and 3 Raptor Vacuum Engines (RVac). Super Heavy currently has 29 atmospheric Raptor engines but in the final version they should be 33.
This means having a very high supply of components with a production that will have to be at a fast pace for the next few months. This is why the McGregor (Texas) plant is being expanded while the main assembly line is currently in Hawthorne (California). Elon Musk stated in an email that he was “worried” right from the production capacity of SpaceX precisely with regard to the engines that currently represent the “bottleneck”.
Elon Musk’s email about Raptor engines and SpaceX’s failure
In an internal email leaked, Elon Musk is concerned about the situation regarding the production of Raptor motorcycle. This could result in severe damage to SpaceX delaying the launch plans and therefore the arrival at the profitability of the project Starship. This is why it has encouraged its employees to give their best, even during the holiday period.
In the email, below, we refer to an executive: his name is Will Heltsley. This is the former head of SpaceX’s propulsion division who joined the company in 2009 and in the current role since 2018. His resignation is due to poor progress in optimizing the Raptors. Heltsley joins Lee Rosen and Rick Lim, two other executives who have left Musk’s company in recent months.
It November 30 Musk he also added that the production problems of Raptor engines would be in the process of being resolved. However, it is not clear what the causes were. Also on the same day he also pointed out how the program Starship from SpaceX is ambitious as its load capacity will be high compared to all the competition (and which will be necessary for “extend life on Mars”).
Elon Musk’s email to SpaceX employees
In the internal email it is written that “Unfortunately, the Raptor manufacturing crisis is far worse than it seemed a few weeks ago. As we have delved into the issues since the previous senior management’s resignation, they have unfortunately turned out to be far more serious than reported. There is no way to go about it. sweeten this point. I was going to take this weekend off, as my first free weekend in a long time, but instead I’ll be on the Raptor line all night and all weekend. Unless you have critical family issues or can’t physically back to Hawthorne, we will need all hands on the deck to recover from what is, frankly, a disaster. The consequences for SpaceX if we fail to produce reliable enough Raptors is that we will not be able to fly Starship, which means that we will not we will be able to fly the Starlink V2 satellites. The V1 satellites themselves are financially weak, while the V2 satellites are strong. bringing terminal production to several million units per year, which will consume huge capital, assuming V2 satellites will be in orbit to handle bandwidth demand. These terminals will be useless otherwise. As a result, we face a real risk of bankruptcy if we fail to hit a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year. Thank you, Elon “.
The Raptor Engine Problem
It must be considered that as far as the pace of construction of Starship is also high given the size of the vector, the first models will be “sacrificed” for testing. Even assuming the initial orbital tests are successful, landing on platforms or on land is not expected. This means at least one Ship it’s a Super Heavy (with altogether 35 Raptor motorbikes) will be destroyed.
It is also likely that some subsequent tests will not be completed successfully leading to the destruction of other units. Then there are engines that may not be considered reliable enough or that could get damaged during static fire. The units needed a SpaceX they will therefore be many more than those actually used.
According to estimates by Elon Musk, it is expected that from the McGregor plant two to four Raptor engines can be produced daily (if the premises are maintained). However, the actual timing of when this should happen is unclear.
To be able to keep contract prices with NASA and other partners competitive, the company’s margin is likely to be much lower than the competition. The same can be said of the terminals for Starlink which are produced at a loss, even if this factor is slowly decreasing.
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