(inquisitive music) - This is the Terran 1,
the first rocket that's almost entirely 3D printed.
It was built by Relativity Space,
a startup that is developing a new
potentially revolutionary way to manufacture rockets
using the biggest metal 3D printers ever made.
- When I started the company, I thought there was a
50/50 chance within three months we figured out
3D printing a rocket was
just not gonna be viable at all.
- [Narrator] Although Relativity has made impressive strides
in the field of 3D printing,
it's never launched a rocket into space,
a notoriously difficult feat for any company
let alone one that uses an untested manufacturing method.
Yet that lack of a track record
hasn't diminished customer's interest.
As the date of Relativity first launch approaches,
the company says the Terran 1 is one of the most
pre-sold rockets in history before launch.
Today's global commercial space industry is estimated
to be worth over $350 billion.
- Weightlessness. Oh Jesus. (man moaning)
- [Narrator] Although space tourism gets
most of the headlines,
it's only a tiny slice of the overall market compared
to satellite manufacturing and services,
which make up almost 50% of the sector.
According to a city group report,
the satellite market could more than double
to 697 billion by 2040.
- [Launch Counter] Three, two, one
- [Narrator] To cater to this growing demand for satellites
a crop of private aerospace startups have begun developing
new technologies to drive down launch prices
and capture a share of the market.
Relativity Space, which was founded
in 2016 by rocket engineer, Tim Ellis,
is one of the most closely watched companies
in the launch sector.
- The first week of starting the company
and actually the first email I sent
from my Relativity Space email account was a cold email
to Mark Cuban.
We were raising about half a million dollars,
asked him for $100,000 and then I think
about 10 minutes later, he replied back
and said he would give us the entire thing.
- [Narrator] From those auspicious beginnings
Relativity expanded rapidly to include
over 1,000 employees and multiple production test
and launch sites across the country.
Relativity is also just the fourth company to
ever receive a dedicated launchpad at Cape Canaveral.
For the past 60 years,
rocket manufacturing has relied on a labor intensive
and time consuming process involving the assembly
of thousands of parts by hand.
- We have traditionally sent rockets
into orbit by designing them very carefully
on the ground and going through several iterations
of every single component of the rocket
starting from the engines all the way
to the design of the vehicle itself.
And rockets work at the limits of their capabilities
and that's why it takes so long.
- [Narrator] Relativity is looking to shake
up that traditional model by using advanced 3D printers
and artificial intelligence to produce rocket engines
and other complex parts in 60 days rather than years.
- This is our second generation printer.
We have a third generation that's about twice
as big as this
and then a fourth generation that's even bigger than that.
So this one's an older version, but it's still
one that we're using to produce flight hardware actively.
- [Narrator] Traditionally, the different metal parts
of a rocket have been assembled together
by shaping, milling and welding.
But at Relativity engineers program a robot printer
to deposit layers of the company's proprietary metal alloys
one on top of another.
- So we have our own material science team that develops
our own custom aluminum alloys,
which is how we can 3D print a rocket that's strong enough
and has good enough quality.
We use a combination of plasma arc discharge and lasers
to melt and then collect data
on this aluminum wire as it's fed
in to the print head at the end of a robot arm.
- [Narrator] To optimize its rockets designs,
Relativity leverages algorithms
and machine learning to refine each iteration.
- Since you're 3D printing it, you can build almost
anything that the computer algorithm comes up with.
So you do, much like nature,
end up with these evolutionary looking parts.
It's really because it's a computer algorithm
using physics to determine what the part looks like.
So this is a dome
for the new rocket we're developing, Terran R.
- [Narrator] The Terran R is the
second rocket Relativity is developing compared
to its smaller cousin, the Terran 1,
which has about a 2,700 pound payload.
The Terran R has a payload capacity of about 44,000 pounds.
Relativity says it expects to launch the Terran R in 2024.
- So we intentionally have this very wavy pattern
so that makes it much stiffer.
It's really starting to show
with 3D printing what you can do
that you really cannot do traditionally.
With normal manufacturing building something like this,
it would be very challenging.
You would have to have a massive press
and then you also couldn't vary the thickness
of the dome in all the different locations easily
like we've been able to do here.
So we really can cut out quite a few steps
by printing something like this.
So really 3D printing
and the approach we're taking is gonna get even better,
the larger things that we build.
- [Narrator] Rocket manufacturers have typically relied
on complex supply chains in which different parts
of the rocket are made by different subcontractors.
Relativity turns that model on its head
by bringing everything in-house
with a vertically integrated supply chain intended
to make the company a one stop shop
for sending rockets into space.
- We had to simultaneously build a
brand new manufacturing technology,
the world's largest metal 3D printers
and build our own rocket.
We have our own rocket engines.
We develop our own flight software, all the electronics
and computers that control the rocket, the structures,
the test site, the launch site.
But the advantage of that I is there really is
not off the shelf technology.
You can just go buy and plug in.
Building everything from scratch lets us also cut out
kind of middlemen as far as suppliers
and other companies that frankly would just slow us down.
- [Narrator] Relativity isn't the first rocket company
to incorporate 3D printing into its manufacturing process
but when it comes to 3D printing and rockets,
no other company matches the ambition of Relativity.
According to the company, the Terran 1 is
85% 3D printed by mass.
For its next rocket, the Terran R, Relativity's goal is
for it to be 95% 3D printed by mass.
Last year Relativity announced it was also planning
to launch the first commercial mission to Mars in 2024.
- It's a really ambitious but important mission
and despite the private space industry this year
being two decades old, there's really only two companies,
SpaceX and now Relativity,
that are working on this mission.
- [Narrator] Relativity's biggest test to date is expected
to take place in February when the company will attempt
to launch the Terran 1 into orbit.
- Rockets work at the limit
of what is possible to do with materials
and when we introduce a new manufacturing technique
which is what has been done by using 3D printer
we introduce a set of unknowns and challenges.
So it remains to be seen
if this technology actually will be able to substitute
what other manufacturing technologies can do.
- [Narrator] A successful orbital mission would not
only prove that a 3D printed rocket can reach orbit,
it would also demonstrate
that Relativity's new 3D printing technology can be used
to build reliable cost effective rockets.
- This is gonna be a big rocket.