Can Elon Musk’s Mars Plans For SpaceX Prove To Be The Demise Of Tesla?

Earlier this month, a Falcon 9 rocket blew up and destroyed a Facebook satellite. This is not the first time that this happened. If Musk wants to send humans to Mars, he and his team at SpaceX must find a way to fix this issue.

News.com.au added that Elon Musk’s massive plan for SpaceX will definitely affect Tesla’s future. It was noted that, currently, the car manufacturer is already facing too many risks. It is losing so much money right now, money which it may not be able to get back in the future.

The publication reported that Musk has a lot of things going on right now. First, SpaceX has plans with NASA, aside from the Mars thing. Next, he recently took on SolarCity’s debt, which is costing him money. It is highly likely that these issues will take its toll on Tesla.

SpaceX is set to take on the wild, wild waste

Of course, skeptics say that SpaceX is trying to do too much, too fast. It’s a fair point in light of the recent accident at the Kennedy Space Center where an unmanned Falcon 9 blew up during routine pre-launch procedures. Others point out that this endeavor will cost anywhere from hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars. It’s far more than even Elon Musk, cofounder of Paypal and CEO of Tesla and Solar City, could possibly afford alone or raise collectively. These kinds of question have yet to be fully answered, although Musk does mention in the video that reusability and a strong public-private partnership will play a big role in dramatically lowering costs.

Other big questions are: where will the first assessment team land, how will they live, and what will they use for gas? Mars may look like the desert southwest in images returned by robotic explorers, with clear crisp lines of desert and dune against pink and blue skies, but it is not. The surface of Mars is instantly lethal to humans in a dozen different ways. The rarefied air is mostly carbon dioxide and nitrogen with no free oxygen at all. The surface is bombarded by radiation, even the soil is toxic by most standards, and these are just some of the hazards we know about.

What could wreck Elon Musk’s plan to colonize Mars isn’t science, technology, or money—it’s ethics

Musk’s dream to colonize Mars is not about science, though. It is an insurance policy. “History suggests there will be some doomsday event,” he said. “The alternative is to become a space-going civilization and a multi-planet species.” When your belief is that you’re saving humanity from annihilation, you may not care too much about a few alien microbes.

But Musk also admits that he can’t achieve the colossal task alone. “Ultimately, this is going to be a huge public-private partnership,” he said. Even if Musk doesn’t have ethical qualms, as a publicly funded body, NASA most certainly will.

The biggest lingering questions about SpaceX’s Mars colonization plans

But a human Mars settlement is more than just hardware. The lives of people will be at stake, and serious thought needs to be given to the safety of the first human settlers. Musk admitted that the first colonists would have to be prepared to die, but killing people either on the way to Mars or once they get there will defeat the entire purpose of creating a colony in the first place. SpaceX may consider itself just a transportation company, but if it wants to get in the business of transporting humans, the company needs to reassure the public it can get them to a destination in one piece.

More Than Money at Stake in Tesla’s SolarCity Deal

The vote on Tesla Motors’ proposed merger with SolarCity is drawing nearer. That means Tesla shareholders have quite a dilemma to sort out.

Though Elon Musk, Tesla and SolarCity’s chairman and largest shareholder, has termed the proposal a “no-brainer,” the reality, at least for Tesla shareholders, is far more complex.

From a strictly financial perspective, the deal is something Tesla shareholderscan do without. Tesla, of course, has significant ongoing cash needs without the additional burden from SolarCity. Though Tesla showed $3.2 billion in cash on its balance sheet as of June 30, that money is expected to burn quickly as Tesla prepares to bring the Model 3 sedan into production. Capital expenditures alone are expected to total $1.75 billion for the second half of the year.

Adding the struggling solar-panel developer to the mix would make this problem worse. SolarCity spent $766 million on operating expenses last year, nearly twice as much as its total revenue. Through June of this year its expenses hit $265 million, 42% more than its revenue in the first two quarters. Worse still, SolarCity has more than $3 billion in long-term debt on its books. Tesla has said it would need to raise fresh capital before the year is out, despite raising nearly $2 billion in equity financing in May.

Avoiding that burden would give Tesla more financial flexibility to launch the Model 3 on time and on budget. A successful Model 3 launch is essential for Tesla to justify its valuation, and that task becomes more urgent as legacy auto makers roll out new competition for the Model 3.

Tesla-SolarCity Merger Would Make Tesla’s Business Model Worse, Not Better

Tesla shareholders would be better off voting down the company’s merger with SolarCity, in part because combining the two companies would likely cause Tesla’s expenditures to explode.

The merger looks like a loser from a Tesla shareholder’s perspective, mostly because the addition of SolarCity would wear on Tesla’s financial well-being, as the company’s capital expenditures alone are expected to balloon to $1.75 billion by the second half of the year.

Adding the hulking, money-bleeding solar-panel developer to the mix would inevitably compound this problem.

SolarCity spent nearly $800 million on operating expenses in 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, essentially dwarfing its total revenue by more than half. The solar panel maker is an albatross on shareholders’ necks: It currently has more than $3 billion in long-term debt on its books; and its expenses hit $265 million by June.