Boca Chica, Texas - Elon Musk is warning SpaceX employees that the company risks going bankrupt if its newest engine isn't built faster.

SpaceX's new reusable spacecraft, Starship, will need brand-new Raptor engines to blast off on schedule, but the production line has slowed to a crawl.

In an email seen by The Verge, Musk didn't sugarcoat the message: not picking up the pace on building Starship's Raptor engines could apparently ground the company's business plans. Musk wrote about cancelling a rare weekend off to work "on the Raptor line all night", and asked SpaceX employees to do the same in a company-wide email November 29.

He also explained why he requested all hands on deck to get the engine off the line and into the new Starship spacecraft: "As we have dug into the issues following the exiting of prior senior management, they have unfortunately turned out to be far more severe than was reported." According to CNBC, two VPs in charge of propulsion, as well as mission and launch operations quit in November, causing a bit of a shock.

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The supply bottlenecks and production delay plaguing the Raptor engine units don't directly mean that SpaceX faces serious profit loss, but those issues do endanger upcoming 2022 testing and launches. The financial risk would really only materialize if there's a lack of successful tests, although Musks says the company also requires a grueling schedule of one Starship blasting off every 14 days next year.

Although the tone in the email is grim, SpaceX has a stellar track record for beating the buzzer and wrapping up projects in the nick of time, and the company's reusable rockets regularly transport satellites and cargo to Earth's orbit.

Getting the Starship off the ground on a regular basis is what Musk says will make SpaceX worth the investments.