3D printing rocket engines

We’re developing a platform that combines software, machine learning, metallurgy and the largest metal 3-D printer in the world, which we call Stargate. Thanks to our proprietary printheads, software and metal-deposition process, Stargate can make on the order of 10-foot-diameter and 20-foot-tall parts, and it can do it 20 to 30 times faster than other more traditional 3-D printers.

We’re getting to the point where we can make a rocket structure—all the parts for a nearly 100-foot-tall, 7-foot-wide rocket—from scratch in 30 days. Once the parts are printed, the target is to assemble, test, integrate and fly the rocket within another 30 days. So we are en route to making an entire rocket from raw material to flight within 60 days. We’re using Stargate to make our own launch vehicle, Terran 1, as well as a rocket engine called Aeon 1. Those will be the basis of our launch service, which will initially carry satellites as heavy as 1,250 kilograms to low Earth orbit. We are planning to announce our launch site by the end of the year, and we expect our first full-scale, full-performance test flight to occur in late 2020, with commercial service beginning in early 2021.

A launch on our rocket will be $10 million. That makes it highly cost-competitive with rockets that are much larger, such as Russia’s Soyuz, Europe’s Vega and India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. Those are the players we see ourselves up against in the near term. Some other start-ups are offering smaller launchers—like Rocket Labs’ Electron rocket—that can launch payloads more like 150 kilograms, but our rocket could be two to three times cheaper on just a per-satellite basis when we launch multiple payloads at once.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/q-a-3-d-printing-rockets-with-relativity-space-ceo-tim-ellis/