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3D Printed Rockets, Smart Coffee, Clean Living, Out to Launch, and Sailing through Life
EMERGING TECHNOLOGY
Today’s emerging tech feature is a two-fer. Rockets and 3D printing, or better yet, 3D printed rockets. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk get most of the limelight in the private space race. However, this week Relativity Space, the first company to 3D print an entire rocket, just closed a $650 million round of funding with lead investor Fidelity Management & Research Company, LLC. The funding enables scaling of the Terran R program, along with long-term infrastructure development.
The company’s simplified supply chain is disrupting 60 years of aerospace engineering and manufacturing. The fully reusable 3D-printed Terran R can be built with 100x fewer parts, and in less than 60 days.
Tim Ellis, CEO and co-founder says “Relativity was founded with the mission to 3D print entire rockets and build humanity’s industrial base on Mars. We were inspired to make this vision a reality, and believe there needs to be dozens to hundreds of companies working to build humanity’s multiplanetary future on Mars. Scalable, autonomous 3D printing is inevitably required to thrive on Mars, and Terran R is the second product step in a long-term journey Relativity is planning ahead.”
