Some highlights I found interesting:
After Tinucci had cut between 15% and 20% of staffers two weeks earlier, part of much wider layoffs, they believed Musk would affirm plans for a massive charging-network expansion.
Musk, the employees said, was not pleased with Tinucci’s presentation and wanted more layoffs. When she balked, saying deeper cuts would undermine charging-business fundamentals, he responded by firing her and her entire 500-member team.
The departures have upended a network widely viewed as a signature Tesla achievement and a key driver of its EV sales.
Despite the mass firings, Musk has since posted on social media promising to continue expanding the network. But three former charging-team employees told Reuters they have been fielding calls from vendors, contractors and electric utilities, some of which had spent millions of dollars on equipment and infrastructure to help build out Tesla’s network.
Tesla’s energy team, which sells solar and battery-storage products for homes and businesses, was tasked with taking over Superchargers and calling some partners to close out ongoing charger-construction projects, said three of the former Tesla employees.
Tinucci was one of few high-ranking female Tesla executives. She recently started reporting directly to Musk, following the departure of battery-and-energy chief Drew Baglino, according to four former Supercharger-team staffers. They said Baglino had historically overseen the charging department without much involvement from Musk.
Two former Supercharger staffers called the $500 million expansion budget a significant reduction from what the team had planned for 2024 - but nonetheless a challenge requiring hundreds of employees.
Three of the former employees called the firings a major setback to U.S. charging expansion because of the relationships Tesla employees had built with suppliers and electric utilities.
Haven’t watched the video, but what do you think circularization is? If you’re “just a circulization away from orbit”, you are indeed going a bit slower than orbital velocity. There’s no point to going orbital velocity if your trajectory still brings you back inside the atmosphere. To get to orbit you want to raise your periapsis outside the atmosphere, and you do that by doing a burn at the apoapsis, which is what we commonly call “circularization”.
The planned goal of the mission was to achieve orbital velocity but not orbital trajectory. This was because they had not yet demonstrated the ability of their vac engines to relight in space. If they go into a stable orbit but can’t relight they can not deorbit and they become space junk.
They initially claimed that this was a success (they achieved target velocity) but subsequent analysis was they were quite a bit off. Also because their engine relight test was failed/cancelled they will also not be allowed to attempt a stable orbit in IFT4. They have to demonstrate relight/deorbit capability before they will be allowed to attempt stable orbit.