دانلود رایگان روزنامه مجلات و کتاب انگلیسی کتاب صوتی کمیک

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ترجمه متن انگلیسی در ادامه

SpaceX anticipates spending about $2 billion on its Starship rocket program this year and might not need to raise additional outside funding as that work unfolds, according to founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk. Mr. Musk outlined SpaceX’s plans on Saturday during an audio chat on Twitter about Starship, the powerful rocket the company launched for the first time last month. The inaugural test mission ended after about four minutes when a flight-termination system on the vehicle destroyed it as the rocket began to tumble. Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the formal name for the Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX, is privately held and doesn’t disclose financial information. The company has raised outside funds from investors over the years, including from Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Founders Fund. SpaceX has been developing the rocket, which stands nearly 400 feet tall when fully stacked, for several years. In addition to satellite launches, it is designed to be able to handle deep-space missions, including a high-profile National Aeronautics and Space Administration astronaut moon landing planned for 2025. Despite the expected Starship spending, the company likely won’t need to seek new funds, Mr. Musk indicated. “To the best of my knowledge, we do not need to raise incremental funding for SpaceX,” he said. The company will continue to provide opportunities to let employees sell their shares, he added. Last year SpaceX was valued at around $140 billion during a period when employees could sell shares, The Wall Street Journal reported. SpaceX is now working to put additional ground infrastructure at the company’s launchpad in Texas, located adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico and east of the city of Brownsville. The launch of Starship on April 20 spread debris over 385 acres of SpaceX and statepark land and deposited materials as far as 6½ miles from the launch site, environmental regulators have said. Chunks of concrete were thrown from the site. Mr. Musk said the company was moving ahead to build a new system at the launchpad that uses steel reinforcements and water, and is meant to tamp down the kind of plume the first flight generated. SpaceX thought the pad would erode during that launch, but didn’t think concrete would be smashed, he said, citing data collected during an earlier engine test. “We did not think that would have occurred” based on the earlier engine test, he said. “If we thought that would occur, then we would have waited for the steel.” SpaceX won’t be permitted to operate another Starship launch until the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates commercial space launches, signs off. Mr. Musk also said Saturday that the company needed to conduct fresh work on the rocket’s flight-termination system. Such systems are installed on rockets as key safety features, allowing the vehicles to be destroyed during flights. Starship’s system took too long after it was activated, he said. He added that the company has the manufacturing capability to continue producing hardware for Starship as it works to fly the vehicle to orbit. “We do have a production line that if it takes us 10 flights, we’ll do it,” he said.

Tesla Inc.’s recent string of price cuts represent a crucial chapter in the company’s near 20-year story. The moves could suggest the electric-vehicle pioneer has lost its edge and is picking up the bad habits of legacy auto makers. Or, they could be part of the next industry-changing innovation from Elon Musk. Price cuts this year sent conflicting signals about customer demand for the company’s cars, which have generated fat profits in recent years after more than a decade of heartache as Mr. Musk forged a new path for the auto business. Then last month, Mr. Musk articulated his strategy behind the moves. He declared Tesla would give priority to continued sales growth at the expense of near-term profitability. That stance unnerved some investors who expected the company to continue massively increasing deliveries while maintaining enviable profit margins. The combination helped justify its techlike market valuation that far exceeds its 100-year-old competitors’. Some fear Mr. Musk is picking a page from the industry’s dusty old playbooks by chasing a crown of global sales leadership, potentially at the expense of profit margins. Mr. Musk maintains he is making a 21st-century gamble that he can, over time, profit from future software subscription-style revenue from Tesla owners, including for autonomous-driving capabilities. “We do believe we’re…laying the groundwork here and that it’s better to ship a large number of cars at a lower margin and subsequently harvest that margin in the future as we per fect autonomy,” Mr. Musk said last month. His argument is akin to Apple Inc.’s with iPhones and App Store sales: The bigger the fleet of Tesla vehicles sold today, the more potential for future higher-margin software profits. The naked pursuit of scale— and bets that manufacturingcost savings would come through bigger buying power— has been at the root of some of the industry’s gravest stumbles in recent generations. Among them: the failed marriage of Chrysler Corp. and Daimler-Benz AG in 2007 and the awkward pairing of Renault SA and Nissan Motor Co. in an alliance that has had its troubles. Volkswagen AG’s emissionscheating scandal, a controversy known as dieselgate, was born out of its efforts to become the world’s bestselling auto maker. Even current global sales leader Toyota Motor Corp. faced struggles with quality and safety recalls after setting a goal more than 15 years ago of being the first car maker to reach 10 million deliveries a year. In that pursuit, the Japanese auto maker eventually became No. 1 globally, overtaking General Motors Co. in an industry shake-up. GM’s collapse into a government-sponsored bankruptcy in 2009 had roots in the Motor City’s practice of overproducing cars and then using heavy discounts to stoke sales. At one point, 25 years ago, GM executives placed such a collective emphasis on market share that they took to wearing lapel pins that read “29.” The number symbolized their goal of holding U.S. market share to 29%, after watching it fall from a peak of more than 50%. Mr. Musk is betting that his race to develop driverless-car technology will allow him to upend the fundamentals of the car business, saying that losses in margin now will be made up by having more Tesla vehicles on the road in the future and therefore more built-in-customers for the software it sells as downloads. Some analysts are skeptical, especially given that Tesla hasn’t yet demonstrated a fully self-driving car. Many car companies have talked about the upside of software sales, which for the industry mostly remain elusive. And investors worry Tesla’s price cuts will trigger a broader price war that will hurt everyone. To accommodate hoped-for growth, Tesla is adding manufacturing output, including a newly announced factory in Mexico, to take it beyond the more than two million units the company said it can make annually now. Ultimately, Tesla has already suggested, it could cost nearly $150 billion to reach its goal of 20 million cars produced annually in 2030. Some investors are bullish. They are betting that, software sales aside, Tesla’s cost advantage in making electric cars will allow it to absorb price cuts and capture volume at the expense of rivals still trying to catch up. Still, the expansion comes as the new-car market grows increasingly uncertain. Interest rates are making vehicle purchases tougher, and competitors are flooding the market with their own EVs. Tesla’s sales growth has slowed below the 50% year-over-year target promised by Mr. Musk. With the price cuts, firstquarter deliveries rose 36% while profit fell almost 25%. Perhaps worse, in some investors’ eyes, Tesla’s operating margins, a measure of profitability, fell behind those of European auto makers such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW, when calculating the results without the money the EV maker received from selling regulatory credits to rivals. So far, rivals have resisted following Tesla into a price-cutting battle. GM Chief Executive Mary Barra has faced tough questions about how GM could catch up with Tesla’s higher operating margins on EVs and the cost advantage in making them. On GM’s conference call with analysts Tuesday, Ms. Barra was asked which she would rather achieve if forced to choose: her target for profitability or GM’s goal of reaching one million EV sales in North America in 2025. “We’re going to work toward profitable growth,” Ms. Barra replied.