In a candid email to SpaceX employees, Elon Musk highlighted critical issues in Raptor engine production. He warned of a real risk of bankruptcy if the company fails to achieve Starship launches at least once every two weeks starting next year.
The Raptor engines power SpaceX's Starship, the fully reusable spacecraft designed for interplanetary missions. Each Starship requires six Raptors, while its Super Heavy booster needs 33, enabling unprecedented payload capacity.
SpaceX envisions operating fleets of Starships for NASA's Artemis program lunar missions and beyond. At a recent U.S. National Academies meeting, Musk projected the need for nearly 1,000 Starships to enable Mars colonization in the medium term.
To support this launch cadence, SpaceX must ramp up Raptor production significantly. However, a leaked email from Musk over Thanksgiving—obtained by Space Explored—reveals the company is not on track to meet these goals.
Musk described the production crisis as "much worse than it seemed a few weeks ago." He spent his Thanksgiving weekend hands-on at the Raptor line and called on all employees to join the effort.
“Unless you have critical family issues or are physically unable to return to Hawthorne [SpaceX Headquarters], we'll need everyone on deck to recover from what is, frankly, a disaster,” the email stated.
Starship is essential for deploying Starlink V2 satellites, which Falcon 9's Merlin engines cannot handle. SpaceX has already launched over 1,600 V1 satellites and 100 V1.5 units via Falcon 9. Scaling to millions of user terminals demands massive bandwidth from V2 satellites in orbit.
Musk emphasized the stakes: “We face a real risk of bankruptcy if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year.”
Meanwhile, SpaceX prepares for Starship's first orbital test flight in January or February, pending FAA approval of the launch site's environmental review by year-end.
