Not long ago, the vice-president in charge of developing the Raptor engines that power SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy booster left the company. I wondered at the time if they were having trouble producing the engines, and it turns out I was right.
Elon Musk has sent a company-wide email saying that the company's Raptor development is indeed having major problems.
He described a dire situation 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.
As the article linked above indicates, the company is planning a new series of Starlink satellites and needs the Starship to launch them.
I expect more details to be coming out in the space-related press in the near future.
Update: And as I expected, more details are coming out. Here's an article from Ars Technica with more information.
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