In the mid of various space exploration projects, Elon Musk-founded SpaceX, a private US rocket company, is seeking to get more capital, reports say about $300 million — so far, this amount would push the fundraising total to over $1.33 billion if it’s a sealed deal. According to a filed document, this new round of fund would increase a per share at $214.
Fundraising
A part of the eye-popping total of funds raised came from Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which has a reported $191.1 billion assets from retired teachers in one of Canada’s most densely populated provinces.
Olivia Steedman, the fund senior managing director of a new department called Teachers’ innovation Platform, praised SpaceX and expressed the excitement of working with the company as it launches the Starlink project.
Two Projects
Starlink is just one of the two intensive undertakings of SpaceX that will make up of 11,943 satellites in the low Earth orbit.
The aim is to create a web that relay high-speed internet to the Earth. Sixty small internet satellites have already been released two months ago, which means the recently raised funds came in handy in hastening production and rendered key for further development. Elon sees this project to fund Starship.
Starship, the second of the projects, is the space rocket that aims to bring up to 100 people to Mars or moon and which already has two prototypes.
Developments are currently in Florida and Texas, and according to reports, the team is finalizing the production of the Raptor engine that will be used for the ships and is also looking at finalizing the design.
Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX vice president of commercial sales, said they are eyeing for the first flight in 2021.
Significance of Pi
Specifically, the amount Elon is looking to score is $314.15 million, which is kind of culturally significant for a company of engineers and scientists.
As you would know, “pi” or π is equivalent to 3.1415, and as you can observe, the amount is a nod to the mathematical constant. Was this intentional or just a pure coincidence?
According to the private company, it was just indeed a happenstance and Elon did not actually plan this, although admit it, it is kind of mind-blowing for a coincidence.
At $214 per share, that means the total doesn’t go beyond five digits of the pi, totaling $314,152,000, but pi is 3.1415926535. In order to really ace the value of pi, a share should have been $214.0049491485014.
Previous Blunder
Meanwhile, this wasn’t the first time people expected that there was meaning behind Elon’s decisions.
In August last year, he stirred controversy after tweeting that he will make Tesla, a car manufacturing company he also founded, private at $420 per share.
Surely enough, the Securities and Exchange Commission went after him, alleging that the billionaire only picked the number for its subliminal significance.
In the end, Elon and Tesla had to settle the matter with a $20 million-penalty each, which will be given to the investors that were harmed by his impulsive act.
That’s not all, the disgraced executive had to vacate his position as a chairman of his own company.