Relativity Space: General Thread

[Conexion Espacial]

https://twitter.com/relativityspace/status/1529878828440465413

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://eu.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2022/05/27/cape-canaveral-rocket-printer-relativity-space-ready-terran-mission-florida/7318869001/

3D printed rockets: at Cape Canaveral, Relativity Space readies for first Terran launch
EMRE KELLY   | Florida Today
5 hours ago

[Daniels30]

Relativity’s 3D Printed Rocket on Path for Summer Debut Flight
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-27/relativity-s-3d-printed-rocket-on-path-for-summer-debut-flight

[FutureSpaceTourist]

twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1530586594784190464

From 2 guys in a WeWork dreaming of an end-2020 first launch, to today: 800 people across multiple sites, we developed an entirely new large scale manufacturing tech + advanced oxygen/methane rockets, with $hundreds of millions in customer contracts launching in a few more weeks.

https://twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1530694491430170624

*few more weeks like low digit months

twitter.com/marcushouse/status/1530705214910906369

The benefits of the 3D printing could be astronomical. @thetimellis, congrats on the stage 2 duty cycle result. Much there that requires tweaking before flight?

https://twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1530721845112094720

All set. We passed data review so all testing complete! Next test on orbit

[FutureSpaceTourist]

[Daniels30]

Terran 1' first stage begins its trip to LC-16 today!
https://twitter.com/relativityspace/status/1531657865185792000

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1531661704118927360

Factory is LIT this morning as we ship Terran 1 Flight 1 to Cape Canaveral… holy ⭐️⭐️ getting real! Stage one testing up next at our launch site, working toward full mission duty cycle hold down test.

twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1531661991298813953

Beautiful. By far the largest metal 3D printed product ever made, and the world’s first printed rocket.

https://twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1531664068003520512

Oh and yes that is definitely flight 2 being printed in our Stargate printer next to this ^_^

[HMXHMX]

Wait a minutę...it took 800 people to make a rocket untouched by human hands?

[trimeta]

Wait a minutę...it took 800 people to make a rocket untouched by human hands?

The outdated and no-longer-used slogan of "rockets with zero human labor" has been removed from the title of this thread for a couple of months now...

[russianhalo117]

Wait a minutę...it took 800 people to make a rocket untouched by human hands?

While nearly everything was printed by 3D additive manufacturing printers, people load and operate said machinery and other hardware. Q&A team inspecting the print medium as it arrives to the production line to NDT&E of the final prints of assembly components and then you have engineers, programmers, component assembly technicians, big list goes on and on. The figure could be team members per vehicle on the line to the whole company.

[edzieba]

https://twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1531661704118927360

Factory is LIT this morning as we ship Terran 1 Flight 1 to Cape Canaveral… holy ⭐️⭐️ getting real! Stage one testing up next at our launch site, working toward full mission duty cycle hold down test.

twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1531661991298813953

Beautiful. By far the largest metal 3D printed product ever made, and the world’s first printed rocket.

https://twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1531664068003520512

Oh and yes that is definitely flight 2 being printed in our Stargate printer next to this ^_^

Big (and shallow! As well as scalloped) Terran R dome lurking in the back of shot there too.

[matthewkantar]

Wait a minutę...it took 800 people to make a rocket untouched by human hands?

While nearly everything was printed by 3D additive manufacturing printers, people load and operate said machinery and other hardware. Q&A team inspecting the print medium as it arrives to the production line to NDT&E of the final prints of assembly components and then you have engineers, programmers, component assembly technicians, big list goes on and on. The figure could be team members per vehicle on the line to the whole company.

SpaceX had 300 fewer employees by the end of the Falcon 1 launches, does the 3D printing really save work hours?

[russianhalo117]

Wait a minutę...it took 800 people to make a rocket untouched by human hands?

While nearly everything was printed by 3D additive manufacturing printers, people load and operate said machinery and other hardware. Q&A team inspecting the print medium as it arrives to the production line to NDT&E of the final prints of assembly components and then you have engineers, programmers, component assembly technicians, big list goes on and on. The figure could be team members per vehicle on the line to the whole company.

SpaceX had 300 fewer employees by the end of the Falcon 1 launches, does the 3D printing really save work hours?

IMHO only in certain departments. Coding what to build often can add hours during the rapid prototype phase.

[Robotbeat]

Wait a minutę...it took 800 people to make a rocket untouched by human hands?

While nearly everything was printed by 3D additive manufacturing printers, people load and operate said machinery and other hardware. Q&A team inspecting the print medium as it arrives to the production line to NDT&E of the final prints of assembly components and then you have engineers, programmers, component assembly technicians, big list goes on and on. The figure could be team members per vehicle on the line to the whole company.

SpaceX had 300 fewer employees by the end of the Falcon 1 launches, does the 3D printing really save work hours?

Nope. Probably more work, actually, to make rocket tanks entirely out welds.

But that’s okay. I think they can still succeed even though they picked a bad technology for making the tanks. They’re the only other company besides SpaceX (and arguably Blue Origin) pursuing full reuse of a medium or heavy lift launch vehicle. (Not sure what Stoke is up to) with Terran-R.

With full reuse, the exact manufacturing cost shouldn’t matter as much as you can amortize the vehicle over dozens or hundreds of flights.

Let’s hope they have enough of a runway (ie money) to get to full reuse.

[Robotbeat]

I think 3D printing is still a bad tech for making rocket tanks, but it is a good tech for making smaller rocket engines, and the 3D printing tech for that is slowly getting even better, so in some ways it’s not a worse approach than SpaceX took with Falcon.

Early clustering with Terran 1 helps them prepare for Terran-R a little bit. The Aeon-R is probably the largest engine you can reasonably 3D print, although that scale keeps increasing as the tech improves and there are ways to improve the scalability of 3D printing to larger engine thrusts. SpaceX also 3D prints parts of their engines, including Raptor, I think (you can see characteristic design features of 3D printing on some parts of Raptor). And as we know, SpaceX is extremely aggressive with cost on Raptor, so they must think 3D printing is appropriate from a cost perspective for those parts.

But I do think Relativity would be better off with some other method of making rocket tanks.

[TrevorMonty]

I think 3D printing is still a bad tech for making rocket tanks, but it is a good tech for making smaller rocket engines, and the 3D printing tech for that is slowly getting even better, so in some ways it’s not a worse approach than SpaceX took with Falcon.

Early clustering with Terran 1 helps them prepare for Terran-R a little bit. The Aeon-R is probably the largest engine you can reasonably 3D print, although that scale keeps increasing as the tech improves and there are ways to improve the scalability of 3D printing to larger engine thrusts. SpaceX also 3D prints parts of their engines, including Raptor, I think (you can see characteristic design features of 3D printing on some parts of Raptor). And as we know, SpaceX is extremely aggressive with cost on Raptor, so they must think 3D printing is appropriate from a cost perspective for those parts.

But I do think Relativity would be better off with some other method of making rocket tanks.

Printing tanks gives them lot flexibility in early stages while perfecting RLV design. After that printing is ideal for low production rate needed.

They can scale up production for initial ELVs then later use surplus machine capacity for contract work.

This the approach Firefly want to use. Instead of scaling back production facilities when RLVs are on line they just which to contract work.



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[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/relativityspace/status/1532069087718699008

Stage 1 is officially making its way to Cape Canaveral, Florida, where #Terran1 will launch! Check out these photos of Stage 1 being loaded onto the truck and headed to the #sunshinestate. ☀️🚀 #RelativitySpace #GLHF #PrepareToLaunch

[harrystranger]

Terran 1's first stage has arrived at LC-16!
https://twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1533589118864617472?s

[TrevorMonty]

The 1000kg LV class race is on. We have Relativityand and Firefly launching this summer. Not sure of ABL status, this year at least.

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[Hug]

Yeah it's kinda humorous that with everything that has happened all 3 companies in this category finish shipping stages for orbital attempts in a period of <1 month. Firefly in July, ABL are targeting August according to the Kodiak range schedule and Relativity probably no sooner than the ABL launch.