JAKARTA - SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently lashed out at his employees about the company's lack of progress in developing the Raptor engine that powers its Starship rocket.
Starship is a giant, next-generation rocket that SpaceX is developing to launch cargo and people on missions to the Moon and Mars.
The company is now testing the prototype at a facility in south Texas and has flown several short test flights. But to move to orbital launch, the rocket prototypes would need as many as 39 Raptor engines each, requiring a sharp increase in engine production.
Reporting from Futurism, Wednesday, December 8, Elon Musk admitted that he was not sure the rocket would work properly. In addition, Musk also said that if conditions continue like this, SpaceX is on the verge of bankruptcy and chooses to become a public company.
Musk made this confession when speaking at the Wall Street Journal CEO Summit yesterday. Still at the same time, Musk also emphasized how "hard" SpaceX's Starship project is.
"(This project) absorbs more of my mental energy than anything else possible. It's very difficult. There are times where I wonder if we can really do this," Musk said.
Musk himself is known to be so ambitious in all the missions he wants to achieve, including outer space and his autonomous car, Tesla. This is the first time Musk has looked like a desperate person.
However, no one thinks that Musk's statement is really serious, seeing how he has been doing so far.
Earlier, Musk's e-mails to SpaceX employees provided more context about the significance of the departure of former Vice President of Propulsion Will Heltsley earlier this month. Heltsley had been kicked out of Raptor development before he left.
Musk noted in an e-mail that he found the situation "to be much more severe" than previously thought. The billionaire had been planning to take the long Thanksgiving holiday.
However, upon learning of the Raptor's situation, Musk stated that he would personally work on the engine production line to completion, "We need all hands to recover from what was, frankly, a disaster," Musk wrote in an e-mail to his employees as quoted by CNBC. International.
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