Search the Community

<Elon Musk Frantically Warns Employees of Potential SpaceX Bankruptcy Musk advised employees to work over the weekend after reading Raptor engine production issues were far worse than previously thought. Image: Win McNamee (Getty Images) SpaceX employees received a nightmare email over the holiday weekend from CEO Elon Musk, warning them of a brewing crisis with its Raptor engine production that, if unsolved, could result in the company’s bankruptcy. The email, obtained by SpaceExplored, CNBC, and The Verge, urged employees to work over the weekend in a desperate attempt to increase production of the engine meant to power its next-generation Starship launch vehicle. “Unfortunately, the Raptor production crisis is much worse than it seemed a few weeks ago,” Musk reportedly wrote. “As we have dug into the issues following exiting prior senior management, they have unfortunately turned out to be far more severe than was reported. There is no way to sugarcoat this.” SpaceX did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment but Musk did Tweet about the report Tuesday afternoon. “The magnitude of the Starship program is not widely appreciated” Musk tweeted. “It is designed to extend life to Mars (and the moon), which requires ~1000 times more payload to orbit than all current Earth rockets combined.” Though Musk did not confirm or deny the email’s veracity he spoke to its content saying that, while he did not believe bankruptcy was likely, it wasn’t impossible either. The CEO went on to apparently quote Intel founder and former CEO Andrew Grove, writing “only the paranoid survive.” In his email, Musk advised workers to cut their holiday weekend short and called for an “all hands on deck to recover from what is, quite frankly, a disaster.” Summing up the problem, Musk warned the company could face bankruptcy if it could not get Starship flights running once every two weeks in 2022. If all of this sounds familiar, that’s because Musk has previously spoken publicly about times where both SpaceX and Tesla were on the verge of bankruptcy in their early years. More recently Musk claimed Tesla came within “single digits” of bankruptcy as recent as 2018. Raptor’s engine is a critical component of Starship, which SpaceX hopes will one-day transport cargo and people to the moon and Mars. Starship’s ability to meet these ambitious goals is critical to SpaceX’s long-term success which is built upon Elon Musk’s promise of multi-planetary human exploration. According to Musk’s email, Starship will also play a critical role in launching Starlink’s next-generation satellites into orbit. Musk’s stressed-out email follows a tweet earlier this month where the CEO admitted the Raptor 2 would need a “complete design overhaul” to make multi-planetary life possible. Not long after that, two SpaceX vice presidents abruptly left the company according to CNBC. One of those executives, Will Heltsley, who had been at the company since 2009, was working on the Raptor project but was taken off due to a lack of progress. The alarming news comes near the close of what’s been an otherwise stellar year for SpaceX. In 11 months SpaceX managed to launch 25 successful Falcon 9 missions, sent a dozen astronauts to space and drew a roadmap to mass commercialization with its Starlink satellite internet service. You can read the full email over at The Verge.>

Ex-Top Gear and The Grand Tour host Richard Hammond is in a new sponsored video for Ford's Ranger Raptor again. This time round, he tries to impress his daughters by being a cool dad. Published on the DriveTribe YouTube channel, Hammond proclaims that the 210bhp 2.0-litre, twin-turbocharged diesel Ranger Raptor is a “brilliant family car” and proceeds to show us what he means by sending his two teenage daughters the local shops for some shopping. At the shopping center, we can then see him getting bored while waiting for his daughters to return. After quite some time spent trying to entertain himself, his daughters return from the shops with their loots. Probably sick of talking to himself, he then proceeds to entertain himself by bringing the Raptor through a "shortcut" on the way home. Of course, the daughters have no idea the shortcut is actually an off road track and we can see in the video later that they are probably not going to be happy with all the bouncing about in the truck.

With The Grand Tour’s Richard Hammond turning 50 soon, he has earned the rights to celebrate his mid-life crisis. Thanks to Ford, Hammond reckons he has found the solution to make his life whole. Yup, he thinks the latest Ford Ranger Raptor would do him good and the British journalist then proceeds to show us how capable the pick up truck is. Interestingly, Drive Tribe openly admitted that this video was sponsored by Ford, leaving us slightly confused on the video's take away...

Could Ken Block take a stock Ford F-150 and have a blast ripping it around the desert? Yes. Would that be the Hoonigan Ken Block way? Absolutely not. First, he needed more speed, more lights, more graphics and more custom off-roading gear. Block debuted this new Ford Raptor at the beginning of the year, but he never gave it the full proper video feature that it deserved. The first portion of the video details exactly what has been done to this beast to make it a supertruck. He relied on California-based Raptor-focused SVC Offroad, which also did Block's RaptorTRAX, for all the work. Nearly every important piece on the Avalanche Grey 2017 Raptor has been altered, including the engine. SVC took the twin-turbo V6 and gave it a new tune, an SVC intercooler, an SVC intake, SPD turbo adapters and a Stainless Works exhaust system. Block estimates power to be around 550 horsepower and 600 pound-feet of torque, up from about 450 horsepower and 510 pound-feet of torque. Giving the truck a meaner look, the Raptor's new exterior parts include a Gen2 Mojave front bumper with a skid plate, a Gen2 Baja rear bumper, a Gen2 Bypass bed rack with tire storage and wide ADV fiberglass front fenders. A 50-inch light bar up top and a 30-inch bar in the front bumper from Rigid Industries will add extra visibility in the dust. The flashiest feature, however, is the HOONIGAN logo graphics that reflect light, for the illusion of glowing in the dark. The real cred comes from the off-road bits. SVC gave it a Mid Travel Kit with Fox 3.5 bypass shocks in the front, and Deaver Suspension leaf springs, SVC traction bars and Fox 4.0 five-tube bypass shocks in the rear. The Raptor rides on 17-inch Fifteen52 Turbomac HDs wrapped in 37-inch Toyo Tires Open Country M/T rubber. Watch it all come together, as Block shreds up some dirt in the Moab desert.

This is probably not your everyday car nor is it going to be setting any track records. But it is, by far, one of the coolest vehicles ever produced in recent years. The Ford Raptor debuted in 2010 as a SuperCab model with 310bhp, 5.4-litre V8 as a truck that is built to travel off-road at speeds that will break normal trucks. Since then it has been upgraded to a 6.2-litre V8, with 411bhp and 588Nm of torque and is mated to a six-speed automatic transmission. As with the 2010 version, the 2013 F-150 SVT Raptor is also available in a four-door SuperCrew model. With the introduction of the 2013 model, it features industry-first, direct-from-the-factory forged-aluminum conventional wheels that can be upgraded after purchase to extra-capable beadlocks. Beadlock wheels secure the edges of a tyre to the wheel between two surfaces so the tyre is unlikely to roll off the rim if it's aired down to very low pressure, providing extra grip on the trail. For 2013, SVT Raptor adds a new 4.2-inch multifunction LCD screen for the MyFord