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

LONG BEACH, Calif. – For several days into the new year, the Relativity Space factory has been bustling with activity with massive 3D printers and the sounds of construction.

Now about eight years since its founding, Relativity continues to grow as it pursues new ways to create rockets from structures and parts that are typically 3D printed. Relativity believes the approach will make orbital-class rockets faster than traditional methods, require thousands of cheaper parts and allow changes to be made via software – aiming to build rockets from raw materials in 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. Relativity was named CNBC’s Disruptor 50 years ago.

The company’s first rocket, known as Terran 1, is currently in the final stages of preparation for its maiden launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The rocket is built at “The Portal,” a 120,000-square-foot factory the company is building in Long Beach.

But earlier this month CNBC took a look at “The Wormhole:” The facility is over one million square feet Boeing the C-17 aircraft were previously built where Relativity is now loading the engines and building a larger, reusable Terran R rocket line.

“I actually tried to kill this project a few times,” Relativity CEO and co-founder Tim Ellis told CNBC, gesturing to one of the company’s newest additive manufacturing machines — it’s been internally codenamed “Reaper,” a reference to StarCraft game. – which marks the fourth generation of the company’s Stargate printers.

Unlike the Stargate generations before Relativity, which were printed vertically, the fourth generation that built the Terran R’s main structure was printed horizontally. Ellis emphasized the change allows the printer to produce seven times faster than the third generation, and has been tested at speeds up to 12 times faster.

“[Printing horizontally] it seems very counterintuitive, but in the end it enables certain changes in the physics of the printhead that are then much, much faster,” said Ellis.

So far, the company is using about a third of Boeing’s cavernous former facility, where Ellis says Relativity has room for about a dozen printers that can produce Terran R rockets at speeds of “a few years.”

For 2023, Relativity is focused on getting Terran 1 into orbit, to prove the approach works, as well as show how “quickly we can develop additive technology,” Ellis said.

“Given the overall economy, we’re obviously still very scrappy, and making sure we deliver results,” he added.

Correction: A previous story missstated the speed of the company’s 3D-printer has been tested.