With a total financing of more than 1.2 billion US dollars, Terran R Rocket reveals the subversive potential of 3D printing

3D printing rocket startup Relativity Space has raised a $650 million E series, bringing its total financing to more than $1.2 billion. Relativity’s post-investment valuation is now $4.2 billion. The supporting logic behind the financing of Relativity Space is to reduce the number of rocket parts by 100 times and increase the development speed by 10 times. Such a substantial lean evolution has rarely happened before in human history. In this issue, let’s take a closer look at the development logic behind Relativity Space’s strong financing process from 2016 to the present.

© Relativity Space

Starting from the first principles

3D printingOpened the road to the next generation of economical rocket engine manufacturing. exist”3D printingAnd Industrial Manufacturing” talks about3D printingThe manufacturing of rockets is disruptive, and this is reflected in every link from design to supply chain and inventory management to quality control.

Tim Ellis, the founder of Relativity Space, faced two choices when they developed their own3D printingMachine, Relativity Space’s “Stargate” Stargate device is a linear arc3D printingMachine, the largest metal printer in the world, can3D printingApproximately 3.7 x 2.1 meters fuel tank.

© Relativity Space

Then positioning the company at3D printingMachine sales?Still pass3D printingWhat technology affects an industry?The founder at the time clearly believed that sales3D printingThe difficulty of the machine is very high, because what needs to be changed is the thinking of the industry, and people’s thinking habits are inertial, which is difficult to change. They chose the latter, through their own3D printingMachine to produce products.

Tim Ellis, the founder of Relativity Space, also has a superb insight. He believes that there is generally no real understanding of 3D printing in the market.3D printingThe disruptiveness of manufacturing is actually more like a transition from a gas internal combustion engine to an electric, or a transition from an on-premise service to the cloud. 3D printing is a cool technology, but more importantly,3D printingIt is actually software and data-driven manufacturing and automation technology.

In actual use,3D printingTechnology is generally regarded as a technology related to the traditional manufacturing technology “apple to apple” hardware, which is generally ignored by people3D printingThe core of this technology is software and data, and it underestimates the disruptive nature of digital manufacturing of this technology. This will be deeply felt in the future AM project of additive manufacturing technology led by Aachen, Germany.3D printingThe threshold for development is to break through the layers of industrialization through software, and every manufacturing industry will become an enterprise with software or data as its core competitiveness.

Tim Ellis © Relativity Space

Recyclable brings epoch-making significance

The funds from the Relativity Space E round are used to accelerate the production of the company’s heavy, fully reusable two-stage rocket, Terran R. Human Race R is subversive compared to Human Race 1, which is also a strong logical support for Relativity Space’s strong financing of US$650 million in the E round.

© Relativity Space

As expected, Terran 1 and Terran R are different in very significant ways: the former is consumable and the latter is reusable; the former is designed for small payloads, and the latter is designed for large payloads. design. Even Terran R’s payload fairing is reusable, and Relativity has designed a system that, when connected to the second stage, can be recycled more easily.

Relativity Space’s Terran R rocket is 216 feet tall and has a maximum payload capacity of 20,000 pounds (by comparison, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is approximately 230 feet tall and has a maximum payload of 22,800 pounds.)

On the left is Human 1 and on the right is Human R. © Relativity Space

Terran R will use seven new Aeon R engines in the first stage, each capable of generating 302,000 pounds of thrust. The engines and rockets used in the production of Terran R are identical to those of Terran 1. These 3D printers currently also produce the nine Aeon 1 engines that power Terran 1, which means Relativity does not have to completely reconfigure its production line to make new launch vehicles. It takes about 60 days to build a Terran R rocket. For a rocket with this payload capability, this is an incredible speed. Relativity Space stated that the company will launch Terran R rockets from its launch site in Cape Canaveral as early as 2024 and signed the first major customer.

The Terran 1 rocket will perform the company’s first orbital flight at the end of 2021 and will not carry any payload. The second launch of Terran 1 is scheduled to take place in June 2022 and will bring the CubeSat to space as part of NASA’s Risk-Level Launch Service Demonstration 2 (VCLS Demonstration 2) contract.

Tim Ellis, the founder of Relativity Space, believes that 3D printing technology is inevitable to build an industrial base on another planet. He hopes to inspire dozens to hundreds of companies to complete this mission together.

Start a new journey

3D printingPaving the way for the next generation of rocket manufacturing, more companies including Astra, Firefly Aerospace, Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit and other start-ups have entered the space rocket called “software-driven manufacturing” by Relativity Space3D printingfield. These newcomers also hope to spend millions of dollars to get rid of outdated ways of thinking and subvert the aerospace manufacturing technology and business landscape.

According to the German Fon magazine, in China, Link Space (Lingke Aerospace), established in Beijing by 21-year-old Hu Zhenyu in 2014, has always attracted people’s attention. Its new line 1 is a reusable 24-meter-long two Class rocket. In 2016, Link Space conducted a “hover” test on a prototype of a reusable rocket (designed to launch and then return to Earth).

In July 2020, China’s aerospace industry achieved another milestone. The Hyperbolic One Yaoyi Chang’an Auchan launch vehicle (abbreviated as “SQX-1 Y1”) of Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology Co., Ltd. was successfully launched at China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center During the launch, multiple satellites and payloads were accurately sent into a predetermined 300-kilometer circular orbit according to the flight sequence. The launch mission was a complete success, achieving a zero breakthrough in Chinese civilian-operated rockets.

In general, China has joined the ranks of mature aerospace countries: in 2020, China surpassed Russia, almost equal to the United States, completed 39 launches. Since China began allowing private companies to participate in 2014, its domestic space sector has been booming. The number of companies involved has increased from 30 in 2018 to more than 100.

” 3D printingTechnology has become the mainstay technology in the rocket manufacturing process,” 3D printingTechnology is giving birth to a new track made by rockets, but Kitty believes that there will be more and more new entrants on this track, and the competition will become more fierce. The final winner must not only have core design strength, but also need more. Establish barriers to competition, such as leveraging equipment developers and material developers on the equipment side, through the development of special rocket manufacturing3D printingEquipment and special materials further increase technical and manufacturing barriers. At the same time, it is also necessary to build software capabilities to extract the value from the data stream and convert the data into the driving force “fuel” for the advancement of the enterprise.

(Editor in charge: admin)