Relativity Space launches first 3D-printed rocket on historic test flight

https://www.space.com/relativity-space-terran-1-test-launch-failure

by Stevvo • 3 years ago

324 125 3 years ago

space.com

croatiancoder• 3 years ago

honestly the most impressive part of relativity space is how young their founder is.

jessfraz2• 3 years ago

Jordan was 22 when they started!!

AnimalMuppet• 3 years ago

How does a 22 year old get the funding to start something like this?

robopsychology• 3 years ago

Damn he’s my age and I’m still a startup engineer while he’s leading rocket engineering lol - what a person!

mabbo4• 3 years ago

I 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!

_moof• 3 years ago

Second. The first was Zhuque-2 this past December.

mabbo4• 3 years ago

Oh my mistake! They had a similar outcome too- no successful orbit.

Now comes a fun space race to see which of them can get it right first!

Stevvo• 3 years ago

The Chinese Landscape TQ-12 beat them too it slightly. They made it up in December and had a second stage failure much like this rocket.

Mountain_Skies2• 3 years ago

Hopefully 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• 3 years ago

Actually, 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.

mabbo4• 3 years ago

They 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.

xoa2• 3 years ago

To 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.

stronglikedan• 3 years ago

Cows everywhere rejoice.

detritus• 3 years ago

An interesting take! So should we be teaching cows Fire-Breathing?

dennis_jeeves1• 3 years ago

And the methane emitting vegans too :)

izietto2• 3 years ago

Why do people try to launch random stuff into orbit

codetrotter• 3 years ago

Cause we need to expand beyond Earth

Robotbeat• 3 years ago

On a Test launch? Because failure is the most likely outcome for a first launch:

stametseater• 3 years ago

Would you rather they launched a block of concrete? Rocket tests need cheap throwaway payloads.

izietto2• 3 years ago

Makes sense, thanks

abudabi123• 3 years ago

More publicity was needed for SpaceX's Falcon Heavy first launch of a Tesla.

Mountain_Skies2• 3 years ago

Because that manhole cover still makes people laugh when they think about it. Not sure if it was ever found and tracked.

WJW4• 3 years ago

The 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.

metal_am5• 3 years ago

Likely vaporized, unfortunately... https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/488151/could-the...

bryanlarsen4• 3 years ago

I 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...

dylan6042• 3 years ago

NASA considers Apollo 13 a successful failure. In fact, learning about Apollo 13 was the first time I had heard the reference.

lmm2• 3 years ago

This is a rewriting of history after the movie. At the time it was considered a regular failure.

Zeetah• 3 years ago

The Space Shuttle was launched successfully to orbit in it's first try.

Ditto for Artemis.

I haven't checked but I think there were a couple others, too.

xoa2• 3 years ago

OP maybe didn't word it perfectly, but they were talking about organizations not rocket families. Space Shuttle was not exactly NASA's first rocket, just as F9 wasn't SpaceX's first rocket. I don't know if no organization at all has ever been successful on the first try with an orbital rocket or not. The quote Eric Berger at Ars has given was a lot more specific [0]:

No private company has ever launched its first independently developed, liquid-fueled rocket and had it reach orbit on the first try. And Relativity is pushing a lot of boundaries with its methane-fueled booster. Probably the biggest test here is whether the 3D-printed structure of Terran 1 can withstand the dynamic pressure of ascent through the lower atmosphere.

At the same time though it's important to acknowledge that the "works on the first try" for typical Old Space projects came at absolutely enormous expense [1], and it's reasonable for expectations to be different for a project representing billions to tens of billions of expenditure and billion(s) per rocket vs a private company doing something for tens to hundreds of millions. A properly done hardware rich test program has a lot of advantages.

----

0: https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/relativity-space-wil...

1: Not just in money either, but in terms of baking in bad designs until it was way too late to change them, which then could and did cause ongoing challenges for as long as the rockets were used. Like yes the first Space Shuttle made it, the design was made to work through heroic efforts, but the design also meant that heroic efforts were needed every single time. Which isn't very sustainable for something used for decades. And in turn we ended up losing multiple ones with humans on board and all lives lost.

WalterBright• 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure they did unpowered gliding tests first. Since the shuttle was a glider, this wasn't a trivial systems test.

dev_tty01• 3 years ago

True enough, but let's not forget that NASA blew up a lot of rockets before they ever got to orbit. Relativity did pretty darn well for a private enterprise. Good on them.

orbital-decay• 3 years ago

The Space Shuttle was launched successfully to orbit in it's first try.

And it was clear both during the development and in the retrospect, that the crewed launch was extremely presumptuous, as the STS-1 could have easily crashed due to the mistakes made during the development. It's been done to show that the modeling could replace testing (turned out it couldn't), and to cut the costs, as the Shuttle was supposed to be "economical", in the original concept anyway.

cubefox• 3 years ago

At least SLS (Artemis 1) only left the pad after several tries. Of course you could count only the successful launch as a "try".

dsq• 3 years ago

The number of nines required for manned missions is far larger, so not a good comparison.

trollerator233• 3 years ago

Nobody has ever successfully launched a rocket to orbit on their first try

This is just false. See Orbital Sciences Pegasus first flight, right off the top of my head. There are others.

RandallBrown• 3 years ago

Was Pegasus their first launch ever?

justsocrateasin• 3 years ago

One 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.

Symmetry2• 3 years ago

Even 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• 3 years ago

Summarizing 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• 3 years 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...

0xffff2• 3 years ago

I read both founders Wikipedia articles this morning. As far as I can tell, they bother interned at BO, and one had a job at SpaceX for a few years. I definitely wouldn't say they "came from" BO. They seem to have (successfully!!) started a rocket company straight out of college.

byteware• 3 years ago

did 3D printing help them iterate on some component design maybe? also they need to differentiate themselves, so they aren't just another spacex, so being the "3D printed rocket company" sounds better for getting investment I guess

ragebol• 3 years ago

- 3D printing is mentioned all the time in RS news. I'm honestly not sure why. Is this really an advantage?

You can print some shapes that are very hard to make otherwise, or even generatively designed and optimized. Integrate a bunch of parts into one, saving weight on bolts etc. Iterate on the design faster, as there's no need to make custom tooling and fixtures etc. 'Just' a ginormous printer.

Symmetry2• 3 years ago

Relatively reproducible builds of physical objects without having to get a full robotic assembly line going seems sort of interesting.

peterfirefly• 3 years ago

So instead of chilling one fuel, you have to chill both.

The current Falcon 9 version "chills" its RP-1 as well (so they can fit more in the same tank volume). It's not far below 0 degrees Celcius, though.

What's more interesting is that the oxygen is also cooled below its boiling point to make it denser (so they can fit more in the same tank volume).

(PS: there are two propellants but only one of them is called "fuel". The other one is the oxidizer.)

pmayrgundter3• 3 years ago

Re: why 3d printing. Generally agree with your points, tho for early stages the iteration benefits outweigh the economies of scale.

BUT! Rocket manufacture in space.. that's where it shines. If you're a small Mars, Lunar or asteroid base and depends on rocket transit, you'll want full reproducibility on your side and complex economy-of-scale factories are not going to be feasible for a long meanwhile.

MattGrommes• 3 years ago

They talk a lot about the benefits of 3d printing in this Veritasium video from a year or so ago.

https://youtu.be/kz165f1g8-E

apendleton2• 3 years ago

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.

"coking"

panick21_3• 3 years ago

I don't have details on this but I assume like Falcon it'll be a reusable stage 1 that lands.

They are aiming for both stage re-usability.

jessfraz2• 3 years ago

Huge 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• 3 years ago

Thank you Jess

Kosirich• 3 years ago

Congrats to you and the team. Win to celebrate by everyone working in metal AM.

metal_am5• 3 years ago

While 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• 3 years ago

In 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_am5• 3 years ago

That'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.

obituary_latte• 3 years ago

I think the idea is that if they can get the process down and prove it's viable (today was a huge step in that direction, especially surviving MAX-Q and not blowing up), it will scale because instead of spending TONS of money on tooling that is typically not reusable past a singe iteration, they can iterate and produce quickly and efficiently. Curious, though, why you say it won't scale? Why not?

joefigura• 3 years ago

3D printing a rocket would be a lot more convincing if it hadn't taken Relativity ~7 years and billions of dollars to make it to a first launch attempt. They'll probably do alright, but that's much more capital and much longer than others (SpaceX, Rocket Lab, ABL)

pmayrgundter3• 3 years ago

I agree, why bother with the body cylinder. Do welded rolled steel with cutouts like SpaceX, standard bolts, etc..

Fwiw, SpaceX also 3d prints quite a bit.

A bit of convergent evolution here.

WWLink• 3 years ago

Why not try something different? Just because spacex does something well doesn't mean everyone has to copy spacex.

shantara• 3 years ago

SpaceX also 3d prints quite a bit.

Pretty much every modern rocket engine manufacturer does. The engines have a lot of unconventionally shaped pipes that could be manufactured as a single structural element using 3d printing to avoid the need for extra welding and potential points of failure.

codesnik• 3 years ago

the only use case I can think of for the rocket body 3d printing, combined with methane engines, is a something weird: fly to mars with a 3d printer and some technology to extract iron from the sand and methane from the atmosphere and build multiple rockets there to fly something useful back to Earth. But that's such a big leap of imagination.

botdan• 3 years ago

The visuals of the blue, methane exhaust were breathtaking:

https://twitter.com/johnkrausphotos/status/16389231884397772... https://twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1638985593580408841

kube-system2• 3 years ago

Methane 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/get...

    transform: rotate(180deg);

WJW4• 3 years ago

Luckily the floor below my stove is sturdy!

TheBlapse• 3 years ago

In fact, the first methane exhaust!

quickthrower2• 3 years ago

Rocket! Powered by CSS

WJW4• 3 years ago

Shock diamonds are so beautiful <3

martythemaniak• 3 years ago

This 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.

mcoliver2• 3 years ago

So 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

doodlesdev2• 3 years 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.

mcoliver2• 3 years ago

Nexus 6p. Waiting for it to charge enough to turn on seemed like an eternity.

ChuckMcM• 3 years ago

Watched 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• 3 years ago

3D 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• 3 years ago

Believe they’re aiming for a 2 month lead time

api• 3 years ago

It 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.

enragedcacti• 3 years ago

I'm far from an expert but it seems like at least some companies use cnc milling very extensively which I can't imagine is all that fast either. Many of the huge parts in this SmarterEveryDay video at ULA have tool markings e.g. at 8:40. I'm also skeptical of 3d printing being as big of a boon as they pitch but I also wouldn't be super surprised if it nets an improvement in speed for some parts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0fG_lnVhHw

sheepybloke• 3 years ago

Yes and no. Some of the piece you have to make need to be cast, which means having a forge make the molds, test the molds out, and then, if you find an issue, start the whole process over again. That process can take at times around 6+ months, and more if you find an issue or have to redesign. Similarly, because of the limits of machining, 3D printing allows you have to have much more complex parts and geometries, especially for the engines. I was at GE Aviation for a bit, and they showed us some nozzles they printed that would be impossible to make if not for 3D printing just because of the complex geometries.

bglazer• 3 years ago

Is the engine 3d printed? Or at least components of it? The only footage I’ve seen of their 3d printing process is on, relatively parts like tanks. That may just be to protect IP, but I would be very impressed if they’re printing and using really complex engine components.

aardvarkr• 3 years ago

I’d wager most modern rocket engines are 3D printed. At the very least SpaceX uses 3D printed engines. It greatly enhances the ability to cool the engine using the supercooled propellant and the technology to achieve it isn’t exactly cutting edge. 3D printing metal using SLS has been around since the eighties

cornholio• 3 years ago

I am curious why would anyone expects that 3d printed tanks are a good idea. We have sheet metal, it has well controlled and probably close to optimal performance (that is, the maximum mechanical resistance that you can get out out of a given mass of aluminum or stainless steel). The resulting rocket is a long, hollow tube. What exactly do you gain by 3d printing the entire body, other than a nice investor buzzword?

I could see a gradual move to 3d printing, the engine of course with it's complex features, then the bulkheads, downcommer & manifolds, maybe fairing and other aerodynamically shaped pieces etc. But why would you try to print sheet metal transversely, one slice at a time? What possible design you could think of, other than a long, slender tube, that can utilize the flexibility of 3rd printing and provide value to justify the necessarily reduced mass ratio ?

eagerpace• 3 years ago

Because they're not trying to do the same thing as everyone else. They're also building the worlds largest 3D printer. Something like this could be shipped to the Moon or Mars in the future.

strangattractor• 3 years ago

Maybe a 3D printer could me built on the Moon and build rockets there. Like really big rockets:0

spandrew• 3 years ago

Holy sh*t. Even though it didn't work — damn that's neat.

xoxxala• 3 years ago

Obligatory Scott Manley video on the launch and a look at the failure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkaYPMgpvIY

They did very well for their first launch. Most impressive.

rkagerer• 3 years ago

Can 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• 3 years ago

I'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.

Relativity Space launches first 3D-printed rocket on historic test flight

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