Month: April 2024

Enlarge / What a Supernova spacecraft might look like in orbit. (credit: Portal Space Systems)

Over the course of the last seven decades, the vast majority of satellites have launched into orbit with propulsion mostly as an afterthought. That's not to say having thrusters is not important, but once the vehicle reached its intended orbit, the on-board propulsion was used mainly for station keeping and small maneuvers.

One of the truisms about spaceflight, in fact, has been that a vehicle isn't going anywhere after it reaches a particular orbit. That's because the energy needed to make significant changes in one's orbit around Earth is very high.

In space today, the current choices of on-orbit maneuverability are not optimal. There are conventional rocket-powered thrusters that require an extraordinary amount of propellant to move around. There are ion thrusters, which are significantly more fuel-efficient, but cannot make changes quickly. And that's really about it.

Enlarge / Tesla is laying off around 500 staff who have worked on its Supercharger network, plus its new vehicle development team and its public policy team. (credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

There's more chaos at Tesla this week. The Information reports that last night, the company's erratic CEO Elon Musk emailed workers with the news that he has dismissed a key pair of executives—one responsible for the Supercharger network, and the other head of new vehicle development.

The electric car maker posted its quarterly results last week and they paint a poor picture, with shrinking sales and plummeting profit margins. While Tesla once had a strong first-mover advantage and benefited from Musk's marketing savvy, the company has frequently ignored the many hard-learned lessons of the auto industry.

Customers not turned off by Musk's antics instead are losing interest with a product line up of two EVs that are ancient in car years (the Models S and X) and two EVs that are merely old (the Models 3 and Y). The Models 3 and Y are also the only two vehicles that Tesla sells in volume. Any other automaker would have a second-generation Model 3 ready to go either this year or next, but at Tesla the product pipeline is empty.