The Thanksgiving weekend has been transformed into a full-blown crisis over at SpaceX by an Elon Musk "all hands on deck" email. The production snags for the new Starship Raptor engines turned out to be more severe than previously thought, putting the launch of the new Starlink satellites in jeopardy. These are the ones that are supposed to make Starlink profitable, and Elon Musk warns that the Starship has to fly at least twice a month next year to keep SpaceX afloat.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Severe-Starship-Raptor-engine-production-snags-could-bankrupt-SpaceX-Elon-Musk-warns.582279.0.html
'Only' starship can launch the new 2nd gen sats is a bit misleading... it implies these 2nd gen sats are huge... and need a heavy lift vehicle. Thats not the case... its a numbers game... starship can launch many more sats in a single launch than falcon 9... making the launch faster and more economical. There are already some 2nd gen sats with laser communications in orbit and Starship hasn't been to orbit yet so we know falcon 9 put them there. There are likely business cases for the economics of starship making it profitable and PR branding of starship being more important to the company than besides 'Mars' and 'Moon' missions.
I thought SpaceX currently didn't have clearance to launch their Starship from Boca Chica due to noise/environmental concerns, and that location seems to have a lot of issues as a potential long term launch site.
The Falcon 9 is a very capable launch platform with a much reduced environmental impact - albeit with a lower payload capacity.
What a joke. Because Musk needs to hit his stupid made-up hype numbers, everyone else needs to step it up. The letter explains why anyone would leave and not look back.