Aerospace company of private space transportation, which will take us one day to Mars, reduces 10% of the workforce, almost immediately after the first successful rocket launch for a satellite operator Iridium. The news, first published by the LA Times and confirmed SpaceX, suggest that the company is a financial pressure as it tries to launch two ambitious projects from scratch.
Why SpaceX fired
More than 6,000 people working at SpaceX at the moment. It is not entirely clear which units SpaceX will be affected. The company will be a serious year to experience a Crew Dragon to send astronauts to the International space station, launch two Falcon Heavy, to deploy the first satellites Starlink and start testing the Martian ship Starship.
In a statement sent to The Verge, SpaceX stated the following:
“To continue to fulfill obligations to customers and to succeed in the development of interplanetary spacecraft, and the global space of the Internet, SpaceX needs to become a more focused company. Any of these developments, even if to take separately, ravaged other organizations. This means that we have to part with some talented and hard-working members of our team. We are thankful for what they have achieved and their commitment to the mission of SpaceX. This decision was adopted only due to the extremely complex problems to be solved, otherwise this would not be necessary”.
The dismissal related to the fact that the company that put geostationary satellites into orbit, require fewer runs. “The market is very soft. He was so in the past year, will be in this and I don’t know what should happen next,” said SpaceX President Gwynn Shotwell in September.
SpaceX receives approximately $ 2.5 billion per year of income from contracts with organizations such as NASA, and companies like Iridium. Exact figures nobody will tell since the company is private.
The creation of a new generation of rockets and launch systems, like the Martian Starship and spacecraft for manned missions, the event is not cheap. SpaceX received its first loan of 250 million dollars last year and may be trying to attract another $ 500 million.
The company is also exploring new sources of cash flows, for example, space tourism. He could become a huge source of income, but for this, companies need to make sure that they have enough resources to of her car took off.
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