Printed rockets to boost 3D launches

The first fully 3D-printed rocket in the world, Terran 1, will be launched by 2020 from Launch Complex 16, one of the launch sites at Cape Canaveral. The rocket is made by Los Angeles-based Relativity Space, brain child of collagemates Tim Ellis and Jordan Noone.

The company has been awarded a multi-year contract, the first direct agreement the U.S. Air Force has completed with a venture-backed orbital launch company  to build and operate its own rocket launch facilities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The rocket made by Relativity can carry a maximum payload of 1,250 kg to a low earth orbit of 185 km above the Earth. Its nominal payload is 900 kg of a Sun-synchronous orbit 500 km out, and it has a 700 kg high-altitude payload capacity to 1,200 km in Sun-synchronous orbit. Relativity prices its dedicated missions at $10 million, and $11,000 per kilogram to achieve Sun-synchronous orbit.  According to the company, this is just a prelude to what the it considers to be its real mission — the advancement of manufacturing rockets quickly and at scale as a test run for building out manufacturing capacity on Mars.

The printer, named Stargate has been made by the company and housed aat its office. The printer is  claimed to be the largest of its kind in the world and aims to go from raw materials to a flight-ready vehicle in just 60 days. The company claims that the speed with which it can manufacture new rockets should pare down launch timelines by somewhere between two and four years.