SpaceX to lay off 10% of its workforce

[Zorro]

Source: LA Times

SpaceX, citing a need to get “leaner,” said Friday it will lay off more than 10% of its roughly 6,000 employees.

The cuts were cited in an email sent to employees by President Gwynne Shotwell, which was provided to The Times. “This was a very difficult but necessary decision,” Shotwell wrote.

“To continue delivering for our customers and to succeed in developing interplanetary spacecraft and a global space-based internet, SpaceX must become a leaner company,” the Hawthorne-based company said in a statement. “Either of these developments, even when attempted separately, have bankrupted other organizations. This means we must part ways with some talented and hardworking members of our team.”

Even with SpaceX’s ramp-up of satellite launches — 21 in 2018, up from 18 the year before, and on Friday the first one of this year — it has occasionally cut its workforce. Last summer, the company fired some senior managers at the company’s Redmond, Wash., office because of disagreements over the pacing of the development and testing of its Starlink satellite program.

Read more: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex-layoffs-20190111-story.html

[ArizonaLib]

1. Not as easy as it looks, does it?

Work our government is supposed to do, with the financial and resources of taxpayers helps ensure success. Doing it on the cheap for profit always yields crappy goods and services. This one can't get off the ground.

[Zorro]

2. "Can't get off the ground?"

Are you asserting SpaceX has been delivering crappy goods and services?

[sl8]

4. I don't understand.

I don't understand how SpaceX can be characterized as "can't get of the ground", either literally or figuratively.

Here's what they were doing yesterday:

From https://www.space.com/42977-spacex-rocket-launches-final-iridium-satellites-then-lands.html

SpaceX Launches 10 Iridium Satellites Into Orbit, Then Sticks Rocket Landing

By Meghan Bartels, Space.com Senior Writer | January 11, 2019 10:48am ET

Update for 11:45 a.m. EST: All 10 Iridium Next satellites were successfully deployed

A used SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lofted 10 final Iridium Next satellites into orbit today (Jan. 11), completing a two-year, eight-launch contract between the two companies.

The rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 7:31 a.m. local time (10:31 a.m. EST, 1531 GMT) during an instantaneous launch window. If all goes well, satellite deployment will begin about an hour after launch. The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket successfully landed on the droneship "Just Read the Instructions" about seven minutes after liftoff. That stage had previously flown on the Telstar 18 launch in September 2018. SpaceX did not attempt to recover the fairing, which it has yet to do successfully.

"There it is, right in the middle of the bull's-eye," SpaceX's launch commentator, John Insprucker, principal integration engineer said during the broadcast after the first stage's safe landing. "The first stage is back again down on Earth."

...

[MicaelS]

5. Rubbish.

SpaceX has done more than any other private space venture.

As far as the taxpayer goes, we ( which means our elected officials of BOTH parties) have done a piss-poor job of advancing spaceflight.

We STILL do not have a US manned spaceflight capability.

Bush grounded the shuttle, and Obama did little to advance manned spaceflight.

Spaceflight is often the whipping boy for other parties.

The Repukes want to cut NASA's budget because they do not trust science, and they always want to cut everything but defense.

The Democrat want to spend the money on the ground.

[Locrian]

3. pick two