The aerospace industry is in the midst of a historic boom. As industrial giants take their first leaps and manned voyages into outer space, new and smaller rocket companies continue to emerge, just from July to December 2021, the domestic Galaxy Power (Beijing) Space Technology Co., Ltd. completed B and B+ rounds of financing totaling 1.27 billion yuan. These aerospace companies have sprung up from around the world, adding new color to the brewing frenzy for faster, cheaper, and better access to space.
In this issue, through Relativity Space, a start-up company,3D printingThe technical logic of the aspect, feel it together with netizens3D printingHow to achieve the holy grail of aerospace automation.
© Relativity Space
Deep subversion, starting from the source of technology
Relativity was founded in 2015 by Tim Ellis and Jordan Noone, two young aerospace engineers with the big idea of creating a fully 3D printed rocket. Before Relativity was founded, Ellis worked at Blue Origin while Jordan worked on the Dragon capsule at SpaceX.
Relativity’s first launch is scheduled for early 2022, and the company will launch its Terran 1 rocket, a two-stage, fully 3D-printed rocket, into space in a test flight to show its viability, which will be the first launch almost entirely 3D printed rocket.
Fully printable and fully reusable
Terran 1 is a fully 3D printed two-stage launch vehicle, which according to Ellis is not only the first fully 3D printed rocket, but also the largest metal 3D printed object ever. Terran 1 is 35 meters high and 2.3 meters in diameter, and the entire main structure was 3D printed. The Terran 1 was Relativity’s first rocket, but Relativity is already working on its next rocket: the Terran R.
The next step for rockets has to be fully reusable…and 3D printing is helping rockets push the limits of performance and make them reusable. Terran R is both fully 3D printed and fully reusable. Terran R’s first stage, second stage and its payload fairing will all be reusable. The Terran 1 rocket has the same architecture, the same propellant, the same factory, the same as the Terran R rocket3D printer, same avionics and same team. And even if Relativity Space released the Terran R, the company plans to keep the Terran 1 for a long time to meet the launch of different purposes. Planned to start launching in 2024, the Terran R, in addition to being reusable, is larger and can carry more. At 66 m tall and 4.9 m wide, Terran R will have nearly 20 times the carrying capacity of Terran 1 and can launch more than 20,000 kg into low-Earth orbit.
Competitive advantage, built from the source of manufacturing technology
So why does Relativity use 3D printing to make rockets? How do you view the competitive advantage that 3D printing brings to Relativity? Similar to the increased manufacturing capabilities that many other industries have embraced with automation and software-driven technologies, 3D printing is really just an automated technology that combines many parts together to make them. Based on the technology of 3D printing, Relativity aims to reduce the number of rocket parts by a factor of 100.
It’s true that the basic premise of aerospace hasn’t changed since the beginning of Apollo, in terms of the number of parts, as it was 60 years ago, the aerospace industry’s factories are full of fixtures and hundreds of thousands to millions of individual parts. parts, all through reassembly, a process that spans a very complex supply chain. Every aerospace manufacturing facility still manufactures products using huge fixtures and very complex supply chains, and it takes many years to develop new products. If you want to make some small tweaks and changes, you have to throw all of that away, which is a heavy trade-off for any existing business. AMPower has predicted that by 2023, 73% of additively manufactured aerospace parts will be final product parts (rather than being used for prototype purposes). One of the most direct subversions is that 3D printing “simplifies the supply chain. From the perspective of parts, the number of parts is reduced by an order of magnitude. From the perspective of materials, Relativity’s entire launch vehicle is manufactured with only four raw materials. Such subversion, Yes 3D printing will be the Holy Grail technology for aerospace automation.
However, even on an international level, Relativity is not the first rocket company to use 3D printing technology. Companies such as SpaceX, Boeing, and Blue Origin have integrated different parts for 3D printing. But for now, the scale of the company’s 3D printing capabilities is unique. While early use of 3D printing in aerospace has seen printing small components for use within the system, Relativity is working to print all of the rocket’s vital parts as a whole, significantly reducing the number of individual parts used. With fewer parts, fewer steps, and fewer raw materials, Relativity, through its unique 3D printing method, is able to give the company a huge advantage in everything from cost to the time it takes to build a rocket.
If you factor in the long-term hardware that needs to be purchased, the average rocket takes two years to build. Relativity is striving to go from raw material gate to launch vehicle manufacturing within 60 days, achieving an amazing rocket delivery capability breakthrough manufacturing.
Software-defined manufacturing, the inevitable shift
In 2021, Relativity received strong investor support. Relativity raised about $1.2 billion in funding over a period of about eight months between early 2021 and August 2021. Relativity’s new 1 million-square-foot (over 90,000 square meters) Gigafactory in Long Beach, California sees 3D printing disrupting 60 years of aerospace industry, combined with AI-driven controls, Relativity’s Stargate 3D printers continuously optimize production to Exponentially improve product quality and reduce production time, reduce costs, and enable product designs that are not possible with traditional aerospace manufacturing.
As a vertically integrated technology platform, Relativity is at the forefront of the inevitable shift to software-defined manufacturing. By fusing 3D printing, artificial intelligence and autonomous robotics, Relativity’s Gigafactory is the factory of the future. In terms of commercial aerospace additive manufacturing, the ultimate winner not only needs to have core design strength, but also needs to establish multiple barriers to competition. The material of the data further raises the technical and manufacturing barriers. At the same time, it is also necessary to build software strength to extract the value from the data flow and convert the data into the driving force “fuel” for the enterprise to move forward. As 3D Science Valley mentioned in the book “3D Printing and Industrial Manufacturing”, the transformation of every enterprise is a very difficult choice. No enterprise can “jump” directly from one mountain to another. A process of “downhill” and “uphill” again.
For innovative companies like Relativity Space, there is no “downhill” process, and this kind of light approach brings obvious advantages. Aiming to build a fully reusable Terran R, Relativity Space looks to the new “top of the hill” with unique technology and first-mover advantage. On January 27, 2022, Relativity Space announced that the company has been selected by NASA as one of 12 companies to provide launch services for the agency’s VADR mission, with a contract order period of five years and a maximum combined value of all 12 contracts of 3 One hundred million U.S. dollars. The VADR contract provides a wide range of FAA-licensed commercial launch services capable of delivering payloads from CubeSats to Class D missions to a variety of orbits. These small satellites and Class D payloads can withstand relatively high risk and are ideal platforms for technological and architectural innovations that contribute to NASA’s scientific research and technological development.
With the increased NASA VADR contract, Relativity’s first rocket, Terran 1, continues to be the most pre-sold rocket in pre-launch history. To date, Relativity has received contracts from commercial and government entities for Terran 1 launches, including the upcoming NASA VCLS-2 mission later in 2022.
(responsible editor: admin)
0 Comments for “Upending 60 Years of Aerospace, 3D Printing Becomes the Holy Grail Technology for Aerospace Automation”