Relativity Space Launches Its First 3D-Printed Rocket, But Fails To Reach Orbit

On Wednesday, startup Relativity Space successfully launched its Terran 1 rocket from its launch complex at Cape Canaveral, Florida, after two previous attempts had been scrubbed. However, the rocket failed to reach orbit due to a failure with the upper stage engine after a successful stage separation. The rocket, which was almost entirely 3D-printed, is an industry first. Despite the failure, the event will give the company valuable data as it moves into future test launches.

The company manufacture its rockets with its Stargate printers, which can help build a rocket from raw materials to flight readiness in about 60 days. “Not only did we develop a new rocket, but we also developed a brand new manufacturing platform that we’ve used to produce a majority of that rocket” says Relativity’s SVP of revenue operations Josh Brost.

The company was founded in 2015 by Tim Ellis and Jordan Noone, both of whom had been working at bigger space companies: Ellis for Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin and Noone for Elon Musk-founded SpaceX. Both were working on metal 3D printing, and their experience led them to see an opportunity for how 3D printing could lead to iterative spacecraft development and offer other advantages over traditional aerospace manufacturing. (The two are also alumni of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.)

But one challenge in starting the company, Ellis, now the CEO of the company, told Forbes, is that they didn’t really have any access to capital. “I knew really nothing about entrepreneurship, even though we decided to start this startup. And so Mark [Cuban] was one of the first people I thought of, because I had heard from a friend in college that he actually is responsive to cold emails.” It turned out Ellis’ friend was right. Noone and Ellis cold-emailed the billionaire, trying nearly two dozen different possible email addresses until they hit the right one. The subject line that caught the billionaire’s attention? “Space is Sexy, 3D Printing Entire Rocket.”

Ellis continued, “And then he asked, ‘What do you want from me?’ And I said, ‘We’re raising the seed round and we’re gonna raise half a million dollars, so we’d love it if you fund $100,000.’ And he came back and said, ‘You know what, I’ll actually fund the entire thing. I’ll give you half a million dollars.’ And this all happened within probably 30 minutes.”

Since then, Relativity has raised over $1.3 billion in investment funding with Pitchbook estimating the company’s valuation at over $4 billion. It has also struck deals with NASA, satellite broadband company OneWeb and other customers for launch contracts valued at over $1.2 billion, the company says. At its headquarters, it’s built some of the world’s largest 3D printers, which are used to manufacture the rocket’s structure and components. (One of the first items the company ever printed, a six-inch diameter ring, was on board today’s launch.)

“Terran 1’s place in Relativity’s story is similar to that of the Falcon 1 for SpaceX.”

Wednesday’s launch was of the company’s first, smaller rocket, the Terran 1, which is largely geared as a step towards development of the company’s larger, heavy-lift Terran R rocket, which the company expects will be its biggest revenue driver. Terran 1 is a two-stage rocket capable of delivering payloads of up to 2,755 pounds to low-Earth orbit at a price of $12 million.

The Terran R rocket, which the company plans to be fully reusable and will be able to lift nearly 16 times heavier payloads than its predecessor, and will also be capable of delivering spacecraft to the Moon and Mars. The company’s website has its first launch aimed at 2024, but that timeline will be partially dependent on the data gathered by this Terran 1 launch and others, cautions Brost.

“Terran 1’s place in Relativity’s story is similar to that of the Falcon 1 for SpaceX,” Caleb Henry, a space industry analyst for Quilty Analytics, told Forbes in an email. “The goal is to prove out key launch technologies ahead of a larger rocket – for SpaceX, the Falcon 9, for Relativity, the Terran R – that can compete for lucrative deals on the commercial marketplace.”

Even the fact that Terran 1 didn’t achieve orbit shouldn’t dampen its prospects. For one, the rocket actually met its goal for this test, which was to go past “max Q”—the place in a launch where the rocket is under maximum dynamic pressure, a key test of the structural load a spacecraft can handle. For two, early launch failures are pretty normal in the rocket industry.

“Launch vehicles have a higher rate of failure in their early years,” says Henry. “and the industry has become all too familiar with this fact as new rockets from companies around the world – Astra, Avio, Landspace, MHI, and Virgin Orbit – all had failures in the past 12 months.”

That said, the sooner Relativity can prove a successful launch, the better, because the market opportunity is more open right now. That’s because several legacy companies, like United Launch Alliance, are winding down current launch vehicles (in part because of regulatory restrictions against the use of Russian-manufactured rocket engines) but are still months or years away from launching their next-generation rockets. Demand for new launches is also on the rise thanks to advances in satellite technologies geared towards low Earth orbit.

“Global launch capacity is currently constrained by the winding down of legacy vehicles, the slow roll out of new launchers, and fresh demand coming from large broadband constellations,” Henry continues. “Companies with reliable and affordable heavy-lift vehicles that can launch at a healthy cadence have a significant opportunity in front of them.”