[HN Gopher] Relativity Space launches first 3D-printed rocket on...
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Relativity Space launches first 3D-printed rocket on historic test
flight
Author : Stevvo
Score : 152 points
Date : 2023-03-23 16:28 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.space.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.space.com)
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| 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.
| croatiancoder wrote:
| honestly the most impressive part of relativity space is how
| young their founder is.
| jessfraz wrote:
| Jordan was 22 when they started!!
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| How does a 22 year old get the funding to start something
| like this?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How does a 22 year old get the funding to start
| something like this?_
|
| By having SpaceX and Blue Origin on your resume. Noone was
| also in front of the FAA as a student, which turns heads.
| tlb wrote:
| They applied to YC in late 2015. I thought "Wild idea, but
| the founders know what they're talking about, have built
| stuff in the past, and understand the challenges." Other
| partners agreed and we gave them $120k. They built a
| prototype huge 3D printer on the cheap, showed it to more
| investors who were impressed enough to write checks, and it
| grew from there.
|
| I hop Tim or Jordan will write more someday.
| robopsychology wrote:
| Damn he's my age and I'm still a startup engineer while he's
| leading rocket engineering lol - what a person!
| mcoliver wrote:
| 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
| doodlesdev wrote:
| > 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.
| mcoliver wrote:
| Nexus 6p. Waiting for it to charge enough to turn on seemed
| like an eternity.
| jessfraz wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Thank you Jess
| metal_am wrote:
| 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.
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| 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.
| shantara wrote:
| >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.
| WWLink wrote:
| Why not try something different? Just because spacex does
| something well doesn't mean everyone has to copy spacex.
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| I'm not making that argument.
|
| SX picked rolled steel (really, a custom variant) as a good
| tradeoff for performance, durability and cost. That was
| trying something different, and Relativity's goals for low-
| cost and reuse look much more like these goals
| WJW wrote:
| Just because most cars use round wheels doesn't mean trying
| different wheel shapes is necessarily a good idea.
| Sometimes there's just a clear best way of doing things and
| there is no benefit in diverging from that.
| kataklasm wrote:
| 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_am wrote:
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| I don't think they ever planning on building 50 of them. If
| they can get reusability sorted out quickly, they're
| unlikely to ever need more than a dozen or so.
| obituary_latte wrote:
| 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?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 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...
| Zeetah wrote:
| 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.
| xoa wrote:
| 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.
| bigiain wrote:
| > it's important to acknowledge that the "works on the
| first try" for typical Old Space projects came at
| absolutely enormous expense
|
| And, I suspect (as your footnote mentions), they took risks
| that would not be considered/permitted today.
|
| Modern "Human rated" space flights are very very different
| to the Gemini and Sputnik days.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they did unpowered gliding tests first. Since
| the shuttle was a glider, this wasn't a trivial systems test.
| dylan604 wrote:
| NASA considers Apollo 13 a successful failure. In fact,
| learning about Apollo 13 was the first time I had heard the
| reference.
| lmm wrote:
| This is a rewriting of history after the movie. At the time
| it was considered a regular failure.
| spandrew wrote:
| Holy sh*t. Even though it didn't work -- damn that's neat.
| justsocrateasin wrote:
| 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.
| botdan wrote:
| The visuals of the blue, methane exhaust were breathtaking:
|
| https://twitter.com/johnkrausphotos/status/16389231884397772...
| https://twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1638985593580408841
| kube-system wrote:
| 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);
| WJW wrote:
| Luckily the floor below my stove is sturdy!
| WJW wrote:
| Shock diamonds are so beautiful <3
| martythemaniak wrote:
| 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.
| Symmetry wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| > 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.)
| MattGrommes wrote:
| 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
| byteware wrote:
| 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
| airstrike wrote:
| _> - 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 wrote:
| 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.
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| 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.
| apendleton wrote:
| > 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"
| ragebol wrote:
| - 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.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Relatively reproducible builds of physical objects without
| having to get a full robotic assembly line going seems sort
| of interesting.
| outworlder wrote:
| Simpler logistics (including inventory) too.
| izietto wrote:
| Why do people try to launch random stuff into orbit
| codetrotter wrote:
| Cause we need to expand beyond Earth
| Robotbeat wrote:
| On a Test launch? Because failure is the most likely outcome
| for a first launch:
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Because that manhole cover still makes people laugh when they
| think about it. Not sure if it was ever found and tracked.
| WJW wrote:
| 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_am wrote:
| Likely vaporized, unfortunately...
| https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/488151/could-
| the...
| [deleted]
| stametseater wrote:
| Would you rather they launched a block of concrete? Rocket
| tests need cheap throwaway payloads.
| abudabi123 wrote:
| More publicity was needed for SpaceX's Falcon Heavy first
| launch of a Tesla.
| izietto wrote:
| Makes sense, thanks
| mabbo wrote:
| 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!
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| 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.
| mabbo wrote:
| 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.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| 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.
| mabbo wrote:
| Controlled _release_ , but that's not _leaking_. When you
| release it, you burn it immediately so that a cloud of
| explosive gas doesn 't build up.
|
| When it's leaking somewhere, that cloud is building up in
| an uncontrolled way in an unexpected place.
| xoa wrote:
| 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.
| _moof wrote:
| Second. The first was Zhuque-2 this past December.
| mabbo wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Cows everywhere rejoice.
| detritus wrote:
| An interesting take! So should we be teaching cows Fire-
| Breathing?
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| I think you're lighting the wrong end
| apendleton wrote:
| Most methane cows emit is through belching:
| https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/33/which-is-a-bigger-
| methane-so...
| doodlesdev wrote:
| One can dream.
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