LOS ANGELES-Elon Musk's main goal in life is to help ensure the survival of mankind by populating Mars! "You back up your hard drive," explains Elon, "maybe we should back up life, too." To achieve his goal, Elon started SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transportation company. SpaceX is working to build a spaceship capable of going to Mars. Elon vows, "We're going to make it happen." To fund his dream, Elon uses business innovations, with some help from accounting analytics. One breakthrough occurred when Elon was analyzing financial reports issued by NASA and concluded that NASA was spending too much building rockets to go to the International Space Station. He believed that if NASA outsourced its rocket production to SpaceX, NASA's costs would decline. SpaceX now builds rockets for NASA for one-tenth of their prior cost. A key factor in Elon's cost-savings analysis is that SpaceX launches reusable rockets. Instead of building new rockets for each launch, SpaceX makes substantial repairs, called betterments or extraordinary repairs, to previously launched rockets. SpaceX was the first to apply this concept, which continues to save NASA billions. Elon pushes to solve big problems. "When something is important enough," insists Elon, "you do it even if the odds are not in your favor." ENTREPRENEURIAL DECISION [ A1 BTN 8-5 Review the chapter's opening feature involving Elon Musk and SpaceX. Assume that the company currently has net sales of $8,000,000 and that it is planning an expansion that will increase net sales by $4,000,000. To accomplish this expansion, the company must increase its average total assets from $2,500,000 to $3,000,000. Required 1. Compute the company's total asset turnover under (a) current conditions and (b) proposed conditions. 2. Evaluate and comment on the merits of the proposal given the analysis in part 1 . Identify any concerns we would express about the proposal