Tim Ellis is speaking to a Senate subcommittee today. There are a couple tidbits about relativity that he included in his statement.The parts that were new to me were:-methalox engine-over 6 dozen hotfires with testing ongoing
Zero labor for operations is nonsense. Airliners still need touch labor. Even automated systems still need human oversight
I was hoping for a lot more from these guys. This is quite disappointing.
Wow, I'm extremely impressed. It is absolutely a paper rocket for the most part, but they have nevertheless done an impressive amount of hardware testing and are clearly not attempting to hide or wildly oversell (coughcougharcacough), given the photos attached below. General-"Our technology builds toward our long-term vision of scaling and sustaining an interplanetary society."-"We are the second company committed to making humanity multi-planetary - and we hope to inspire hundreds more."-"In the early days of settlement, there will be few people living on Mars. Intelligent automation and lightweight, compact 3D printing are fundamental technologies needed to quickly build a new society with scarce resources - and the most scalable means to get back home."-a general focus on improving metallurgy to enable better 3D-printing, optimizing design with iterative simulationsStargate (proprietary 3D printer)-"From raw material to flight in less than 60 days"-"Stargate is the backbone to our vertically integrated factory."-In-situ machining, multiple coordinated print heads for faster prints-Already 3D-printed a prototype Terran (S2?) fuselageAeon 1 (propulsion system)-methalox-open expander cycle-ISP: >360s (presumably Aeon Vac)-Thrust: 15,500 lbf (SL), 19,500 lbf (Vac)-Aeon Vac can be restarted in orbit-more than 70 test fires-fewer than 100 components-claimed production lead time of ~15 daysTerran 1 (launch vehicle)-$10 million per dedicated mission[/b] -S1: 9 x Aeon SL (139,500 lbf)-S2: 1 x Aeon Vac (19,500 lbf)-Autogenous pressurization-Structures are a "proprietary printable metal [sic] alloy"-"Sized for the constellation market"-1250kg to 185km LEO-900kg to 500km SSO-700kg to 1200km SSO-"capacity is uniquely flexible"I'm very intrigued and will be following closely. Lack of even a hint of reusability is disappointing, given the multiple hat tips to SpaceX. The price of $10m is odd and rather noncompetitive, although it's several times larger than, say, Electron. It does make some amount of sense for constellation missions of multiple sats per launch, in which case it would likely be considerably more affordable than Electron/LauncherOne.Somewhat ambiguous as to how far their hardware efforts have progressed and if they've had success. Unclear if the Aeon tested 70 times is scaled, although my money is on it and the prototype tank being full scale. Attached the best images, the rest are in an imgur album right here --> https://imgur.com/a/Lautl
Hmm. I am skeptical about that price per kilo.$10m revenue @ say 70% margin for overheads leaves $3m for making and launching each rocket. At that scale they are launching off a proper pad, so that is about $1-1.5m right there. So they are saying that the entire rocket vehicle costs $1.5-2m out the factory door. With ten engines onboard and all the subsystems - even when printed - those numbers don't hunt. Plus all the tech risks. The engine is nice work, but I will make a bet that this burns a lot of investor money and then flames out. Not because they are evil or wildly over-promoting nothing worth discuasing (coughcoughvectorcough), but because it's not as easy as the web page makes it look.
Quote from: ringsider on 10/19/2017 05:47 amHmm. I am skeptical about that price per kilo.$10m revenue @ say 70% margin for overheads leaves $3m for making and launching each rocket. At that scale they are launching off a proper pad, so that is about $1-1.5m right there. So they are saying that the entire rocket vehicle costs $1.5-2m out the factory door. With ten engines onboard and all the subsystems - even when printed - those numbers don't hunt. Plus all the tech risks. The engine is nice work, but I will make a bet that this burns a lot of investor money and then flames out. Not because they are evil or wildly over-promoting nothing worth discuasing (coughcoughvectorcough), but because it's not as easy as the web page makes it look.I am far too tired to think financially It's definitely intriguingly expensive. Must make some amount of sense, though. And I agree. The last 20 years have chewed up and spit out more than a fair share of "newspace" companies with functioning propulsion and LV prototypes/testbeds. However, Relativity has Y Combinator's support and Tim Ellis seems like an awesome engineer.