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Relativity Space launches first 3D-printed rocket on historic test flight
- croatiancoder 4y agohonestly the most impressive part of relativity space is how young their founder is.
- jessfraz 4y agoJordan was 22 when they started!!
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoHow does a 22 year old get the funding to start something like this?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> How does a 22 year old get the funding to start something like this? By having SpaceX and Blue Origin on your resume. Noone was also in front of the FAA as a student, which turns heads.
- nerdsonpatrol 4y agoVery cool. I just read that he was the youngest person in the world to receive FAA clearance to fly a rocket to space. He was just 20yrs old... (⌐■_■)
- tlb 4y agoThey applied to YC in late 2015. I thought "Wild idea, but the founders know what they're talking about, have built stuff in the past, and understand the challenges." Other partners agreed and we gave them $120k. They built a prototype huge 3D printer on the cheap, showed it to more investors who were impressed enough to write checks, and it grew from there. I hop Tim or Jordan will write more someday.
- robopsychology 4y agoDamn he’s my age and I’m still a startup engineer while he’s leading rocket engineering lol - what a person!
- mabbo 4y agoI believe this is the first big rocket to fly to space using methane, right? With all the companies getting into it as a fuel, that blue flame is going to get pretty distinctive. And yes, it's the exact same blue as from a natural gas stove!
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoHopefully without the added scent for leak detection. I'd assume for rocketry, they have more advanced methods of detecting leaks than our sense of smell.
- thinkcontext 4y agoActually, there's probably a fair amount of relatively controlled leaking that goes on. There's a certain amount of boil off of the cryo temp methane. In the video of the launch you can see active flaring in the wide shot. And at various points plumes come off the rocket on the pad, that's venting through pressure relief valves.
- mabbo 4y agoControlled release, but that's not leaking. When you release it, you burn it immediately so that a cloud of explosive gas doesn't build up. When it's leaking somewhere, that cloud is building up in an uncontrolled way in an unexpected place.
- mabbo 4y agoThey probably do have better means to detect it, but why give up such a powerful and useful one as "every human being that goes anywhere near it can instantly detect it"? Mercaptan is incredible at what it does. A minuscule amount is noticeable by our noses.
- xoa 4y agoTo this and sibling posts: as far as I know no, the methane used for rocketry is extremely pure and doesn't have any scent, nor indeed does natural gas getting moved around or used industrially. It's expensive as an additive, but more importantly sulfur is bad news for a big range of applications, and when it comes to engines in general let alone rocket engines combusters/injectors etc are not sulfur loving. Sulfur is bad in vacuum chambers too for that matter, gets into the walls and then the chamber is contaminated forever. This isn't just a methane thing either, it's an issue with traditional fuels. The formulation for RP-1 has changed significantly over time in that respect for example, from the original 500ppm down to 30ppm now. And if it was cheap enough and still mattered one reason rocketry and aerospace companies might be interested in synfuels beyond the environmental aspect is being able to have zero sulfur at all from the get-go.
- izietto 4y agoWhy do people try to launch random stuff into orbit
- codetrotter 4y agoCause we need to expand beyond Earth
- Robotbeat 4y agoOn a Test launch? Because failure is the most likely outcome for a first launch:
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- stametseater 4y agoWould you rather they launched a block of concrete? Rocket tests need cheap throwaway payloads.
- izietto 4y agoMakes sense, thanks
- abudabi123 4y agoMore publicity was needed for SpaceX's Falcon Heavy first launch of a Tesla.
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoBecause that manhole cover still makes people laugh when they think about it. Not sure if it was ever found and tracked.
- WJW 4y agoThe manhole cover from the nuclear test (if that's what you're referring to) most likely evaporated from air friction, sadly. From the time between video frames we can infer that it did achieve orbital velocity, but it would have been going too fast in the denser parts of the atmosphere to survive. Rockets don't go that fast until they're already quite high up, so they suffer much less.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoI love the Ars Technica headline: "Relativity Space has a successful failure with the debut of Terran 1" While technically a failure, it succeeded at many difficult tasks, like Max-Q, staging and not exploding. They got lots of data back and are in good shape for a second try. Nobody has ever successfully launched a rocket to orbit on their first try, so Relativity was not expected to either. Some rockets have have succeeded on their first try, but no companies or space agencies have. For example Falcon 9's first try was successful, but they failed 3 times on Falcon 1 before its first success. https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/relativity-space-has-a-successful-failure-with-the-debut-of-terran-1/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/relativity-space-has...
- dylan604 4y agoNASA considers Apollo 13 a successful failure. In fact, learning about Apollo 13 was the first time I had heard the reference.
- lmm 4y agoThis is a rewriting of history after the movie. At the time it was considered a regular failure.
- kens 4y agoI was curious so I investigated a bit. Commander Lovell called Apollo 13 a "successful failure" in 1970. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19710038390 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19710038390 NASA also listed Apollo 13 as a "successful failure" in published documents: https://www.google.com/books/edition/NASA_Activities/pDrEu7PZgxIC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%22successful%20failure%22%20 https://www.google.com/books/edition/NASA_Activities/pDrEu7P...
- FredPret 4y agoPerhaps, but "successful failure" seems very apt. Part of your rocket explodes in space... and all three crew still makes it back alive. I've done much worse to my Kerbals. I bet Mission Control saw many high-fives when those astronauts touched down on Earth safely.
- justsocrateasin 4y agoOne of my close friends has been working here for the last few years, it's been exciting watching the journey. Congrats to everyone who made this happen.
- Symmetry 4y agoEven for an experienced company losing a couple of flights in the first ten with a new rocket is par for the course. For a new company to get all the way through stage separation before anything went wrong is a sort of vaguely encouraging sign.
- jmyeet 4y agoSummarizing and adding some points: - Relativity Space was founded in 2016. Just to compare, Blue Origin was founded in 2000. It serves as a stark example of how throwing money at something doesn't necessarily solve problems. Who would've thought in 2000 that 23 years later Blue Origin still wouldn't have reached orbit? - SpaceX's Falcon rockets use oxygen and RP-1 (ie pure kerosene) as fuel. Starship (like the RS Terran rockets) are attempting to use methane instead of RP-1. This is incredibly complicated because RP-1 is liquid as normal temperatures and methane isn't. So instead of chilling one fuel, you have to chill both. A big reason to do this is relevant to rocket reuse. RP-1 leaves behind a soot-like residue all over the inside of the engines. This process has a name that I can't recall. Methane does not have this problem so should reduce reuse cost and turnaround time; - The company claims they will be hopefully flying the Terran R (reusable and larger version of the Terran 1) as early as next year. I am extremely skeptical. RS hit some important milestones with this launch but ultimately did fail to reach orbit. To argue we're 12-18 months away from a newer, larger and reusable version seems beyond optimistic at best. Landing a first stage is nontrivial. I think 2-3 years is more realistic and still aggressive; - Falcon 9 can carry ~22,000kg to LEO. The Terran-1 has a projected payload of 1250kg so even with the low launch cost, the cost per kg is uncompetitive. Remember a rocket can carry multiple payloads (eg the Starlink launches a bunch of satellites at once). Still, there might be a market for this; - RS seems to be putting all their eggs in the Terran-R bucket, which aims to be a reusable vehicle. I don't have details on this but I assume like Falcon it'll be a reusable stage 1 that lands. I'm not sure what the projected payload and cost of this is; - 3D printing is mentioned all the time in RS news. I'm honestly not sure why. Is this really an advantage? Rockets are big. They're made of very large components. The usual advantage of 3D printing is not in cost but in your ability to produce things that cannot be made with traditional methods. For example, newer planes like 787 do this for key components in the engines. Ultimately i don't think people care how it's made, just what the payload cost, launch lead time and potential launch volume is. Personally I'd like to see more competition in this space so I wish them well.
- airstrike 4y ago> - Relativity Space was founded in 2016. Just to compare, Blue Origin was founded in 2000. It serves as a stark example of how throwing money at something doesn't necessarily solve problems. Who would've thought in 2000 that 23 years later Blue Origin still wouldn't have reached orbit? I'm as unimpressed by Blue Origin's (non-results) as the next person, but at the same time from the article it sounds like both co-founders came from Blue Origin...
- jessfraz 4y agoHuge congrats to the team that worked on this! Had the pleasure of being there to witness it and meeting many of them, both old and new employees and what a great group of engineers! EDIT: Shameless plug I know one the cofounders Jordan Noone, and he’s brilliant.
- jordannoone 4y agoThank you Jess
- Kosirich 4y agoCongrats to you and the team. Win to celebrate by everyone working in metal AM.
- metal_am 4y agoWhile I'm not convinced on the utility of 3D printing a cylinder (I think they have plans for more complicated lifting body type shapes in the future), it's great to see more players in the game! As an aside, I'd love to know what alloy they're using. I know NASA had problems with fusion welding 2195 and had to switch to friction stir welding.
- kataklasm 4y agoIn my opinion printing the whole (±) rocket is a fantastic way to build your first protoypes and iterate your designs with high pace. This will probably not scale very well though, especially for geometrically simple parts like cylinders, as you said. But for novel applications where until recently a part like this couldn't have been manufactured realistically, 3D printing is a very exciting new technology in the field. Take a look at their tank caps, which are designed exactly with printing in mind. They have shapes that before their new processes couldn't have been dreamt of. Very excited to see where this goes! I'm currently doing my aerospace engineering bachelors in Germany, hoping to see similar concepts here or at least in Europe soon!
- metal_am 4y agoThat's a good point about scaling. They're not trying to build 50 of them right now, just a handful of prototypes. And AM is particularly well suited to that.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoI don't think they ever planning on building 50 of them. If they can get reusability sorted out quickly, they're unlikely to ever need more than a dozen or so.
- lmm 4y agoI thought the whole point was that they wouldn't need to reuse them if they can print a new one every week for just the cost of the raw metal.
- botdan 4y agoThe visuals of the blue, methane exhaust were breathtaking: https://twitter.com/johnkrausphotos/status/1638923188439777280 https://twitter.com/johnkrausphotos/status/16389231884397772... https://twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1638985593580408841 https://twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1638985593580408841
- kube-system 4y agoMethane exhaust? That's really interesting, I'm not sure why I didn't think CH4 could be used that way. Hmm... https://img.hunkercdn.com/1260x/photos.demandstudios.com/getty/article/108/138/469063871.jpg https://img.hunkercdn.com/1260x/photos.demandstudios.com/get... transform: rotate(180deg);
- WJW 4y agoLuckily the floor below my stove is sturdy!
- TheBlapse 4y agoIn fact, the first methane exhaust!
- kube-system 4y agoYou’ve never been to chipotle before?
- quickthrower2 4y agoRocket! Powered by CSS
- WJW 4y agoShock diamonds are so beautiful <3
- martythemaniak 4y agoThis is a massive success, congrats. I had a look on CrunchBase - founded in 2015 and they've raised a total of $1.3B, with the last round being $650m in 2021. That means it took them 8 years and $1B to reach this milestone, which is really good in space terms. Before SpaceX a single a launch would cost into the hundreds of millions of dollars and program costs well into the tens of billions. Amazing how far space flight has come.
- mcoliver 4y agoSo great to see. Interviewed with them back in June of 2017 from a job listing on HN. They were ~15 people if I recall at the time. My phone went from 50% to zero halfway through the final interview before onsite. I ran to my car to charge and called back 10 minutes later. Interview was dead. Such is life. Wild to see how far they have come but not surprised. Congratulations
- doodlesdev 4y ago> My phone went from 50% to zero halfway through the final interview before onsite. I ran to my car to charge and called back 10 minutes later. Interview was dead. Such is life. That must've been extremely frustrating. Just out of curiosity, what was the phone lol? I'd be _MAD_ if that ever happened to me. Like really mad. But as you said, such is life.
- mcoliver 4y agoNexus 6p. Waiting for it to charge enough to turn on seemed like an eternity.
- ChuckMcM 4y agoWatched the live stream and man, that was pretty awesome! That it passed max-q was what I was waiting for, because that lets them know that 3D printed materials are strong enough to deal with that stress, then their is no need to "rack and stack" ring sections like they do at SpaceX. Riveting and seam welding take a surprisingly long time over all! Also those joints are the most likely to fail when things get stressed. I am still curious about the 15% that isn't 3D printed. Clearly the avionics, wiring, and carbon-fiber over wraps would not be 3D printed but is that it? Any other fittings or parts? I am definitely looking forward to launch 2 and the root cause analysis of the second state engine startup issue.
- cptaj 4y ago3D printing also takes a lot of time. I'm not sure but I would bet it takes less time to build a rocket with traditional means than through 3d printing. There are other advantages (leverage with investors not the least of them, imo) to the 3D printing angle but simplicity of development and speed of production are not them.
- kiesyy 4y agoBelieve they’re aiming for a 2 month lead time
- api 4y agoIt takes a long time but a lot less human labor, so the cost can probably be brought way down. Don't know if it can be competitive without reusability though, or at least partial reusability of the engines.
- snek_case 4y agoThe thing is, Relativity Space doesn't really disclose much about how the rocket is made. They say it's some percentage 3D printed by weight, but that doesn't really tell you if, for example, they use carbon fiber COPVs for the fuel tanks inside. We don't really know that 3D printing saves them much time. Rockets are large cylinders, which there are other efficient ways to manufacture. Other companies will 3D print parts of rocket engines. I'm sure Relativity Space does as well, but they probbaly do that separately from the main body of the rocket with some hand assembly after.
- spandrew 4y agoHoly sh*t. Even though it didn't work — damn that's neat.
- xoxxala 4y agoObligatory Scott Manley video on the launch and a look at the failure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkaYPMgpvIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkaYPMgpvIY They did very well for their first launch. Most impressive.
- rkagerer 4y agoCan anyone share a picture of what the rocket looked like on the pad, or sometime before launch? Also how much of it was 3D printed, and which bits?
- ridgeguy 4y agoI've read various places that it's about 85% printed, by mass. The tanks & payload shroud, and portions of the engines as well. For the latter, the expansion nozzles and the crazy custom propellant plumbing were 3D printed.