Noone and Ellis want to launch satellites and other small-to-midsize payloads into orbit by 2020.Īnother major factor in the push toward that goal is data collection. That kind of speed and adaptability will cut the cost of rocket flights by a huge margin - more than 80 percent, the company predicts. How quick and flexible? The goal is to print and launch a new design in just 60 days. “There’s a huge barrier of entry to changing or iterating on a traditional manufacturing device,” Noone says, “and by introducing printing by default for the entire product, you maintain the ability to change things quickly and be flexible.” That kind of optimization, and the quick-change agility afforded by additive manufacturing, is how Relativity Space hopes to differentiate itself from traditional rocket-building. Apollo mission engines back in the space-race days, by comparison, had some 5,600.Ī rocket engine printed by Relativity Space using DMLS 3D-printing technology. The rocket’s thrust chamber assembly is comprised of just three parts. “It’s a pretty tried-and-true process that’s getting fairly codified across most aerospace companies at this point,” Noone says, though Relativity Space appears to have the process down to an exceptional degree. Unlike the groundbreaking Stargate, DMLS is not uncommon in space-centric manufacturing. Relativity Space builds its engines using a process called direct metal laser sintering (DMLS): the printer constructs a given part out of powdered metal, which sits on a bed that ever-so-gradually lowers after each blast of molding heat until the form is completed. The engine that will blast the rocket skyward is also completely 3D-printed. Simultaneously, the other two arms perform post-processing and inspection functions, handling operations like “tank polishing, surface removal, checking for abnormalities or verifying that a finished geometry is what we intended it to be,” says co-founder Jordan Noone, a SpaceX veteran who started the company in 2016 with former USC classmate and Blue Origin alum Tim Ellis. The arm then steers the material, layer by layer, into the precise shape of a propellant tank, booster or whichever component is on the day's to-build list. One arm is outfitted with a deposition head, through which aluminum-alloy wire feeds into the path of an ultra-powerful laser. Not that you’d want to be nearby while it’s torching alloys into malleability. Relativity Space’s room-filling 3D printer - dubbed Stargate, a reference to the classic sci-fi strategy game StarCraft - includes three robotic arms, each tall enough to dwarf the average adult. An Astronomical Printing Job Meet the Largest Metal 3D Printer on Earth
To do so, it has already achieved a monumental first in the process: the company has built what it claims to be the world’s largest metal 3D printer.īecause even though 3D printers have come a long way, it's not possible to print a seven-foot-wide, 105-foot-tall rocket that can withstand the extreme heat and stress of a space launch with a consumer-grade machine that's used to print DIY toys. The L.A.-based aerospace startup aims to build and launch into orbit the world’s first entirely 3D-printed rocket. Relativity Space is no doubt flying uncharted skies. When your mission is unprecedented, sometimes that means inventing a whole new toolkit.
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