Inside Relativity Space’s monster factory 3D-printing reusable rockets

LONG BEACH, California — It’s only a few days into the new year, but Relativity Space’s factory is nothing but quiet, a buzzing operation with giant 3D printers rumbling and construction buzzing.

Now about eight years on from its founding, Relativity continues to evolve as it pursues a new way to manufacture rockets from primarily 3D-printed structures and parts. The theory of relativity believes its approach will make building orbital-grade rockets much faster than traditional methods, requiring thousands of fewer parts and allowing changes to be made through software. — aims to create rockets from raw materials in just 60 days.

The company has raised more than $1.3 billion in capital to date and continues to expand its footprint, including the addition of more than 150 acres at NASA’s rocket engine test center in Mississippi. The theory of relativity is Named for CNBC’s Disruptor 50 last year.

The company’s first rocket, called Terran 1, is currently in the final stages of preparation for its first launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida. That missile was built in “Portal”, 120,000 square foot factory company built in Long Beach.

But earlier this month, CNBC took a look inside “The wormhole:” The facility is over a million square feet where Boeing airplanes formerly built C-17 aircraft where Relativity is now filling the machine and building the larger, reusable Terran R family of rockets.

“I’ve actually tried to cancel this project several times,” Tim Ellis, CEO and co-founder of Relativity, told CNBC, pointing to one of the company’s newest additive manufacturing machines — the machine. This game is internally codenamed “Reaper”, a reference to the StarCraft games. — marks the fourth generation of the company’s Stargate printers.

Unlike previous Stargate generations of Relativity, which printed vertically, the fourth generation of Terran R’s main structure is printing horizontally. Ellis highlights this change allows their printer to produce seven times faster than the third generation and has been tested at up to 12 times faster.

“[Printing horizontally] seems very counter-intuitive, but it ends up making a definite change in the physical properties of the printhead, which is then much, much faster,” Ellis said.

So far, the company is using about a third of Boeing’s old facility, where Ellis said Relativity has room for about a dozen printers that can produce Terran R rockets at a “several years” rate. .

In 2023, Relativity focuses on putting Terran 1 into orbit, to demonstrate how its method works, as well as demonstrate “how quickly we can develop additive technology.” , Ellis said.

He added: “With the economy as a whole, it is clear that we are still very sketchy and assured that we are delivering results.

Correction: The previous part of this story misrepresented the speed at which the company’s 3D printers were tested.