Relativity Space: General Thread

[Tulse]

There's an interesting podcast interview with the CEO of Relativity.  It sounds to me like Relativity is more invested in being a 3-D printing manufacturer than a launch service -- Tim Ellis talked about delivering Relativity's Stargate printers to Mars in order to promote manufacturing there (and it sounded like more than just making rockets).

[Davidthefat]

There's an interesting podcast interview with the CEO of Relativity.  It sounds to me like Relativity is more invested in being a 3-D printing manufacturer than a launch service -- Tim Ellis talked about delivering Relativity's Stargate printers to Mars in order to promote manufacturing there (and it sounded like more than just making rockets).

I think it's because it's a more realistic exit strategy to get bought out by a bigger company by having a unique and novel technology. The alternate is that if the launch provider thing works out for them, it's a double win.

[TrevorMonty]

There's an interesting podcast interview with the CEO of Relativity.  It sounds to me like Relativity is more invested in being a 3-D printing manufacturer than a launch service -- Tim Ellis talked about delivering Relativity's Stargate printers to Mars in order to promote manufacturing there (and it sounded like more than just making rockets).

I think it's because it's a more realistic exit strategy to get bought out by a bigger company by having a unique and novel technology. The alternate is that if the launch provider thing works out for them, it's a double win.

The investors are probably looking at it this way to.

[ParabolicSnark]

https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/11/relativity-is-building-a-3d-printing-rocket-manufacturing-hub-in-mississippi/
Relativity is building up a production plant at Stennis. 220,000 sq ft puts it 50% larger than the Virgin Orbit facility in Long Beach - that's a lot of area. Methinks Relativity may not know exactly what to do with all that floor space, as indicated by the fact that their render (floor areas excluded) is the content in one quadrant that is then mirrored twice so they have 4x the same features.

A feature that is interesting to me is the floral ribbing pattern on the payload adapter. Seems like a feature they added because they're printing and that they can then point to and say "making this with conventional manufacturing would be expensive as hell" to justify printing; and no one is asking "Why are those ribs even needed in the first place?"

With every release by Relativity, all I can see is an incredibly rapid expansion which comes off more as over-extending themselves. Their capital investment and burn rate is insane. With very little physical hardware and testing to show for it, I wonder how long their investor base is going to be willing to foot the bill. We haven't seen any footage of an engine since they retired their Aeon-1 test article and chromed it out for display purposes. The only images of the tanks appear to be mediocre quality at best and with no major progress in over a year.

[JEF_300]

https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/11/relativity-is-building-a-3d-printing-rocket-manufacturing-hub-in-mississippi/
Relativity is building up a production plant at Stennis. 220,000 sq ft puts it 50% larger than the Virgin Orbit facility in Long Beach - that's a lot of area. Methinks Relativity may not know exactly what to do with all that floor space, as indicated by the fact that their render (floor areas excluded) is the content in one quadrant that is then mirrored twice so they have 4x the same features.

A feature that is interesting to me is the floral ribbing pattern on the payload adapter. Seems like a feature they added because they're printing and that they can then point to and say "making this with conventional manufacturing would be expensive as hell" to justify printing; and no one is asking "Why are those ribs even needed in the first place?"

That is a big facility. Well, it's always seemed like they'd prefer to be a manufacturing company first and a launch provider second, so I guess having a big factory makes sense for them.

I think ribs are pretty cool! Lots of rockets have some structural reinforcement in that area, but very few are especially nice looking. They can make that structure look nice for no real additional cost with 3D printing, so why not?

With every release by Relativity, all I can see is an incredibly rapid expansion which comes off more as over-extending themselves. Their capital investment and burn rate is insane. With very little physical hardware and testing to show for it, I wonder how long their investor base is going to be willing to foot the bill. We haven't seen any footage of an engine since they retired their Aeon-1 test article and chromed it out for display purposes. The only images of the tanks appear to be mediocre quality at best and with no major progress in over a year.

I seriously doubt there's been no progress over the past year. Relativity has always been one of the stealthier space startups. The fact that we haven't seen progress doesn't mean it's not happening. And their investors probably get much more accurate and frequent updates than we do.

[playadelmars]

I would also assume USAF, NASA, Telesat, and the ridiculous exec team they’ve put together over the past year don’t just give contracts, launch sites, test sites, factories, partnerships, etc like this away for no due diligence. They all have a front row seat to what is going on, and we the public don’t for now, but to some extent I’d take their word for it until we (hopefully) soon get to see!

[ParabolicSnark]

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613743/relativity-space-3d-printed-rocket/

Pretty thorough write up on Relativity from the MIT Technology Review. This is a rare article that doesn't read (exclusively) like a press release and includes criticism and fact-checking. e.g.:

“To go and print an avionics box or tank or something like that doesn’t make any sense, because there’s much more efficient processes for doing that. I don’t want to rain on Tim’s parade. I wish him the absolute best, but from an engineering perspective, it makes absolutely no sense to us.” - Peter Beck, Rocket Lab

How much of this is a PR stunt, though, is hard to sort out. Announcing you’ve made the first whatever is tempting, especially for small startups. Relativity, for example, claims to have built the largest metal 3D printer—as do Sciaky and Titomic, two industrial hardware companies that aren’t in the space business.

[TrevorMonty]

While 3D printing is easy, making identical parts with same material strengths isn't. Obtaining consist bonding between layers is one of important area.  A lot work is going into validating printed items. The following extract from article shows AJR approach compared to Relativity. This is why AJR have been very careful modifying RL10 for 3D printed parts.

Extract:
But no one is going for it as hard and fast as Relativity. Aerojet builds engines for government contracts and human-rated rockets like NASA’s Space Launch System, which have to be extra consistent and reliable. The company says that more than 60% of its research and development for 3D printing has been nothing more than establishing a database of the chemical and structural properties of different materials. “Others may kind of skip over that, and that’s their right to do that as a risk-accepting posture,” says Jeff Haynes, Aerojet’s senior manager of advanced programs.

By contrast, at Relativity, “if we put a fully printed engine on the test stand, successfully fire it, and then fly it, that for us is success,” says Noone. “You could write hundreds of pages of specifications telling you how to get there, and how to manufacture it, but we have our ways that we do it. I wouldn’t want to be hung up on creating the specification rather than just trying something and demonstrating that it works.”

[ParabolicSnark]

While 3D printing is easy, making identical parts with same material strengths isn't. Obtaining consist bonding between layers is one of important area.
[...]
By contrast, at Relativity, “if we put a fully printed engine on the test stand, successfully fire it, and then fly it, that for us is success,” says Noone. “You could write hundreds of pages of specifications telling you how to get there, and how to manufacture it, but we have our ways that we do it. I wouldn’t want to be hung up on creating the specification rather than just trying something and demonstrating that it works.”

I get that approach and it is attractive and probably sells to investors very well. However, just because you've made it once and it didn't blow-up, doesn't mean you can do it again.

[edzieba]

While 3D printing is easy, making identical parts with same material strengths isn't. Obtaining consist bonding between layers is one of important area.
[...]
By contrast, at Relativity, “if we put a fully printed engine on the test stand, successfully fire it, and then fly it, that for us is success,” says Noone. “You could write hundreds of pages of specifications telling you how to get there, and how to manufacture it, but we have our ways that we do it. I wouldn’t want to be hung up on creating the specification rather than just trying something and demonstrating that it works.”

I get that approach and it is attractive and probably sells to investors very well. However, just because you've made it once and it didn't blow-up, doesn't mean you can do it again.

Vice Versa also applies: you can stack your documents up to your desired apogee if you want, but that does not guarantee your assembly will survive contact with reality.
"Move fast and break things" has been demonstrated to be very effective if you have both the funding to do so and the freedom to spend that funding. "Document all the groundwork and then build it right from the start" has also been demonstrated to work. Both have also been demonstrated not to work and result in a big pile of burnt cash and little practical to show for it.

In the "Aero" side of the aerospace world. there is huge demand for additive manufacturing. Not necessarily for volume production, but for prototypes, one-offs, short notice repairs, replacements when your supply chain has wound down, etc. The is just as valuable for space applications, particularly as the rate of change in vehicle and satellite design accelerates. A 3D printed satellite bus may not be as cheap as one produced on a production line pumping out thousands of satellites, but it is cheaper than a one-off - or even a customised run of a small handful - produced by assembling subtractive-manufactured parts and a darn sight faster in most cases.

Or to put it another way: you may eventually want to turn your nozzles and cast/forge your combustion chambers and mill your injectors; but if you want to get to orbit this year with your initial funding round rather than in half a decade and several rounds later (if ever), you may figure a lower performing printed engine is acceptable to start with.

[Tulse]

The issue a lot of folks have is not with printing engines, but printing things like tanks, where the 3D approach seems very inefficient compared to conventional means.  That said, if we take Relativity at their word, they intend to be able to print a rocket (and other things) on Mars, and in that situation using a single highly-flexible manufacturing technique may make sense.

[TrevorMonty]

A lot of the labour is in assembly, payload integration and launch. I can't see how they   wil l automate these. Installing wiring and plumbing isn"t easy to automate especially at these low production rates.

RL are up to 500 staff and climbing, they've tried to automate where they can. Relativity currently have 80 staff, they will still need a few hundred to build and launch 10+ LVs are year.

[edzieba]

The issue a lot of folks have is not with printing engines, but printing things like tanks, where the 3D approach seems very inefficient compared to conventional means.  That said, if we take Relativity at their word, they intend to be able to print a rocket (and other things) on Mars, and in that situation using a single highly-flexible manufacturing technique may make sense.

For standard cylindrical tanks that is true. If you want to go to other geometries (e.g. the toroidal semiconformal tanks of the Briz-M or Fregat, or other usual packings like Transtage), then printing your tanks to fit your available envelope may be desirable. More so for satellites than for stages, but if you already have the equipment for making arbitrary shaped tanks, it probably would take a large number of tanks fabbed before the cost rises above the initial outlay of the fixed equipment to create cylindrical tanks in the 'traditional' way (and even then you jig may not allow the flexibility for varying tank diameters).

[Bananas_on_Mars]

The issue a lot of folks have is not with printing engines, but printing things like tanks, where the 3D approach seems very inefficient compared to conventional means.  That said, if we take Relativity at their word, they intend to be able to print a rocket (and other things) on Mars, and in that situation using a single highly-flexible manufacturing technique may make sense.

Additive manufacturing might seem inefficient if you only look at the manufacturing part. But from what I read, testing and documentation is the main reason why aerospace components are so expensive. Additive manufacturing paired with automated quality control might fix a big part of that. Why? Because additive manufacturing usually works by producing thin layers. With automated optical systems, you can basically get the equivalent of a CT scan of your whole printed part.

[GWH]

A lot of the labour is in assembly, payload integration and launch. I can't see how they   wil l automate these. Installing wiring and plumbing isn"t easy to automate especially at these low production rates.

RL are up to 500 staff and climbing, they've tried to automate where they can. Relativity currently have 80 staff, they will still need a few hundred to build and launch 10+ LVs are year.

Why install plumbing when you can print it in place? Same with cable raceways. 

[TrevorMonty]

A lot of the labour is in assembly, payload integration and launch. I can't see how they   wil l automate these. Installing wiring and plumbing isn"t easy to automate especially at these low production rates.

RL are up to 500 staff and climbing, they've tried to automate where they can. Relativity currently have 80 staff, they will still need a few hundred to build and launch 10+ LVs are year.

Why install plumbing when you can print it in place? Same with cable raceways.

Still need to install wires and plug them into sensors, motors etc.

Engines need to be bolted to tank and fuel lines connected.

[Robotbeat]

A lot of the labour is in assembly, payload integration and launch. I can't see how they   wil l automate these. Installing wiring and plumbing isn"t easy to automate especially at these low production rates.

RL are up to 500 staff and climbing, they've tried to automate where they can. Relativity currently have 80 staff, they will still need a few hundred to build and launch 10+ LVs are year.

Why install plumbing when you can print it in place? Same with cable raceways.

Support material removal and surface finishing. Additionally, you can’t really 3D print a valve. It requires extremely precise surfaces (and o-rings) to seal. And if you did have the resolution to print a valve (and again, you DON’T), then you’d have a specialized and extremely slow process not suited for the rest of the rocket.

Internal plumbing that’s 3D printed works well for regen engines, but not the whole rocket.

[Robotbeat]

...
RL are up to 500 staff and climbing, they've tried to automate where they can. Relativity currently have 80 staff, they will still need a few hundred to build and launch 10+ LVs are year.

I thought they were going to make rockets with no human labor?

(JK, I work in aerospace 3D printing, and 3D printed parts usually take MORE work than conventional to get to something that you might want to count on... I'd 3D print the nozzle and combustion chambers and CNC or weld everything else...)

[ParabolicSnark]

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/relativity_sunset-in-mississippi-from-the-deck-of-the-activity-6562495213506482176-MKDu

Sunset in Mississippi from the deck of the E4 test stand at NASA Stennis. Thanks to all who have made it possible to get this far - it truly is our second home now.

Squinting through the cell phone artifacting, the test article that is mounted is a turbopump. Pump-pump-turbine configuration with no discharge duct mounted (temporarily sealed off with a plastic bag).

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/relativityspace/status/1159134842694623236

Progress continues! We’ve successfully tested our #Aeon1 engine over 200 times @NASAStennis. These engines produce 19,500 lbs of thrust and nine of them power the first stage of our #Terran1 🚀. The thrust chamber and injector are made of just three #3Dprinted parts.