Chapter 225: Landing Gear
Mercus circled a specific part of the photo and resent it.
“Look, the landing legs for touchdown are supposed to be here. But they’re not.”
Lionel squinted and zoomed in, but indeed, there was no landing gear on the first stage’s underside.
[……Really nothing there?]
“To stand the booster on the ocean barge, you need at least four landing legs. It’s the basics of rocket recovery.”
Yet Leviathan had not a single leg, let alone four.
Mercus hadn’t been entirely convinced of failure until he spoke with the development lead, Matthew Holligan.
But the moment he saw the photo, he was certain.
Dojin wasn’t considering booster recovery at all, focusing solely on launch success.
“Five re-ignitions without recovery don’t make sense. The plan is contradictory from the start. Without booster recovery, the re-ignition tests and the seven-day relaunch are all just empty talk.”
Lionel’s lips curled slowly upward as he listened.
[So… this is an even surer bet than I thought.]
“Right. I think we can increase our short position significantly. This is almost a guaranteed profit opportunity.”
Unable to hold back, Lionel burst into laughter.
[Ahahaha, that’s what I’ve been waiting to hear.]
“So, you’re thinking of increasing the exposure?”
[How could I not, after what you’ve said? Let’s triple our position.]
Tripling it meant a $9 billion investment against Dojin Frontier.
“That kind of attack could topple Dojin Frontier.”
[It won’t collapse all at once, but the more it shakes, the more I gain.]
Lionel explained his plan to invest aggressively in Dojin Frontier’s stock decline, starting with a phased deployment of short positions.
[First, we won’t dump the short positions all at once. We’ll chip away 2-3% each day, making it look like institutional rebalancing. That’s key.]
“Pressuring it slowly until launch, without drawing attention.”
[That way, the panic will last longer. And from D-3, we’ll mix in volatility trading.]
Laying two-way positions in the options market and pressuring shorts intraday would spike the volatility index, doubling the option premiums.
Mercus tapped the table with his fingers.
“Just rumors of Golden Edge moving would bring in the second and third-tier hedge funds in droves.”
As the stock fell, even the retail investors would start dumping.
Coupled with the rocket launch failure, it would lead to a sell-off.
[Once the sell-off starts, liquidity will dry up fast, and the stock will drop 15-20% daily.]
Dojin’s only options to halt the decline would be a capital raise or share buyback.
But that could be read as a sign of desperation.
“Of course, you’ll move the media too?”
Mercus, who had observed Lionel for a long time, knew better than anyone how he made his profits.
Irrecoverable Launch Plan
Toxicity Issues with Hypergolic Propellant
Booster Without Landing Gear
Spreading research reports and interviews with such provocative keywords would naturally unsettle the market.
“It would have to.”
[Haha, right. Scared people act irrationally and keep hitting the sell button.]
The more such people, the greater Golden Edge’s profits, naturally.
After ending the call with Mercus, Lionel sprang into action.
Leviathan Launch: D-60.
[Breaking News] New York Financial Tribune
Leviathan Reveals Critical Design Flaw Before First Launch.
New York – Two months ahead of its launch, Dojin Frontier’s super-heavy rocket, Leviathan, is said to have a critical flaw: no landing gear.
A group of leading U.S. aerospace engineering experts told this paper, “For a rocket designed for ocean barge recovery, at least four landing legs are essential, but none are visible on the released photos of Leviathan’s underside.”
Experts warned that five re-ignitions without recovery are physically impossible, which could send the entire launch plan back to square one.
[Golden Edge Research Briefing]
※Institutional Distribution Only
Title: DJFT (Dojin Frontier) – The Growth Narrative’s Imminent Collapse
·Key Points
-
No Landing Gear: No Booster Recovery → No Re-ignition Tests → 7-Day Relaunch Plan Void
-
Unverified ECR Module Stability: Hypergolic Propellant Backpressure Risk Remains
-
Post-Launch Failure Scenario: PER 100x Valuation Collapse, Growth Premium Fully Eliminated
·Outlook: We estimate Leviathan’s launch success probability at under 15%. In the heightened volatility around launch, DJFT’s stock could plunge 35-50% in the short term.
·Recommendation: Sell (BUY PUT) / Build Aggressive Short Position.
[Tech & Money – Feature Article]
·Overhyped Rocket Myth?
“100-ton payload, five re-ignitions, relaunch within seven days.”
An ambitious slogan, but the industry calls it a pipe dream.
There are zero successful cases of hypergolic-based boosters relaunching within seven days. Issues with the ECR module’s catalyst reaction speed and unoptimized nozzle expansion ratio have already led to multiple failures.
Some Wall Street institutions compare Dojin Frontier’s stock to a skyscraper built on sand.
Warnings follow that over half its market cap could evaporate upon launch failure.
Lionel planted a ‘fear narrative’ among institutions and the public, fully launching the short-selling campaign against DJFT.
The market began treating Leviathan’s ‘failure’ as a foregone conclusion.
└Damn, if the stock tanks like crap, what’s the plan?
└Short paradise is open! Let’s see it drop under $10 by next week.
└Panic selling is coming. Survival of the smartest.
└lol I knew this would happen when they said they’d reuse it on their first rocket.
└This stock really sucks. How does it drop from $23 to $15 in ten days?
└Damn, $15 broken too. This is insane.
└Bro, please save me. I’ll never touch Dojin crap again.
└What the hell’s wrong with you all? It hasn’t even failed yet. What’s with the panic? I told you, when Dojin’s price drops, say thanks and buy more. I just picked up another 10,000 shares today.
└lol you’ll end up broke doing that.
└The chart looks like Ki-young’s squished head lol
└Yeah, sloping down to the right, just like Ki-young’s head.
└Looks like institutions are all shorting too. Should I sell and switch to shorts?
└Hey, Kang Tae-joon just posted on Feed.
└What did he say?
└…….
[KTalk Feed] - @Kang Tae-joon | 135,097,655 Followers
Trust me! (•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑
Ships move farther in rough seas.
A short, crisp sentence.
A signal that it wasn’t over yet, but sadly, few caught the meaning.
└lol here he goes again. This guy posts on Feed whenever something happens.
└“Trust me”? What’s there to trust? The photos show no landing legs on Leviathan.
└My account’s down 40%, so I want to believe him.
└Believe what? This time it’s a stretch. I dumped everything after seeing that post. It felt desperate.
└I sold too. If it breaks $14, the next support is $9.
└But Kang Tae-joon’s never lied before.
└But this time, I just can’t believe it. All the brokerage research is negative on Dojin Frontier.
└Sold my shares and went short. Feels peaceful.
└…….
The market’s reaction was just as cold.
Selling pressure eased briefly after Kang Tae-joon’s post.
But the ‘panic narrative’ built by Golden Edge’s short pressure and media assault held strong.
As institutions and large hedge funds dumped shares, the stock slid to the low $14s by the afternoon session.
Still, some long-term investors and die-hard believers in Kang Tae-joon held their ground, refusing to sell.
They’d seen him turn seemingly impossible plans into reality before and were holding on, half faith, half gamble.
But with over 50 days until the Leviathan launch,
The decline only worsened with time.
Lower Manhattan Midtown, Golden Edge.
Inside the gold-tinted glass exterior, Lionel Brennan stood arms crossed before a massive curved monitor.
Charts filled with red, real-time order books, and option volatility graphs scrolled across the screen.
“$13.23.”
Strategic Analysis Team Lead, Sarah Morgan, standing beside him, called out in a cold voice.
“Down 9.8% from open, new intraday low. DJFT’s market cap lost $12 billion today alone.”
Lionel smiled.
“This is just the beginning. The real drop will come right after the Leviathan launch fails.”
On the other side, Macro Strategy Division Director Vincent Crowe flipped through documents, continuing the report.
“As you said, short interest keeps rising. Currently, 27.4% of the float is short. Besides us, Sigma Capital, Delaware Partners, and QuantBridge are very aggressive on the short side.”
They were known as Wall Street’s hyenas.
Sensing blood at Dojin Frontier, they swarmed.
Lionel sipped from a glass.
“Only fools fail to profit in a market like this.”
Sarah nodded, pointing to a report on the monitor.
“But… something’s interesting. Most large hedge funds are building shorts like us, but a few are taking the opposite position.”
Lionel’s eyebrows rose slowly.
“Which ones?”
“The largest is a hedge fund called Trinity Holdings.”