Relativity Space

Based on Wikipedia: Relativity Space

When Tim Ellis and Jordan Noone sat down in 2015 to sketch out the founding principles of what would become Relativity Space, they were betting that the aerospace industry had overlooked one transformative technology: additive manufacturing. Their conviction was simple—that the world's existing private spaceflight companies weren't investing enough in the potential of 3D printing rockets. Eight years later, with over $1.3 billion in funding and a valuation cresting $4 billion, Relativity Space has proven something far more nuanced than a simple bet on additive manufacturing: the future of launch vehicles lies not in abandoning that technology entirely, but in knowing when to move beyond it.

The company emerged from a relatively uncommon origin—a deliberate founding intent to be the first company to successfully launch a fully 3D-printed launch vehicle into orbit. Headquartered in Long Beach, California, Relativity Space was born during a period of intense excitement in the private spaceflight industry, but its founders saw gaps that others had missed. The aerospace manufacturing sector was spending billions on traditional fabrication methods, while the promise of additive manufacturing—layer-by-layer construction of complex rocket components that would otherwise require assembly from dozens of individual parts—remained largely untapped.

By 2020, the company had announced a Series D funding round that valued it at $2.3 billion, pulling in $500 million from investors who saw potential in the Terran R concept. The following year brought another $650 million led by Fidelity Investments, pushing the valuation to $4.2 billion and bringing total funding to $1.335 billion—a remarkable sum for a company that had never successfully launched a rocket into orbit.

This avalanche of capital was meant to develop what Relativity called Terran R: a partially reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle targeting its first orbital launch no earlier than 2026. The investors told the story: Baillie Gifford, Blackrock, BOND, Coatue, Fidelity, General Catalyst, ICONIQ Capital, K5 Global, Mark Cuban, Playground Global, Social Capital, Tiger Global, Tribe Capital, and Y Combinator among others had all committed serious resources to what they saw as a transformative approach to launch services.

The financial milestones came with binding launch deals. In June 2022, Relativity Space announced it would send OneWeb's second-generation broadband satellites to orbit in 2025—a deal that represented over $1.2 billion in total value despite the company having never successfully launched its first rocket. The dates kept shifting; by late 2026, Terran R was projected to launch for the first time no earlier than that year.

But before the company could reach orbit, it had to attempt the impossible: launching a rocket for the first time. In March 2023, Relativity Space attempted its maiden flight with Terran 1—a two-stage expendable launch vehicle designed to carry payloads of up to 1,250 kilograms to low Earth orbit. The launch date was scrubbed three times due to technical issues. On March 23, 2023, after multiple delays, the rocket finally lifted off.

The mission, named "Good Luck, Have Fun," carried no payload—purely a proof-of-concept flight that tested every aspect of the vehicle's first and second stages. Nine Aeon 1 engines powered the first stage; a single vacuum-optimized Aeon 1 engine fired the second stage into orbit. The launch price advertised in June 2020 was $12 million per mission.

Four minutes into flight, everything went wrong. An anomaly occurred with the upper stage engine that prevented the rocket from achieving orbit. The second stage engine and nosecone splashed into the ocean approximately four minutes after separation—Loss of control came not from external factors but from internal failure in the propulsion system.

Following that failed flight, Relativity announced it was retiring Terran 1 entirely—a dramatic pivot to developing something far larger: Terran R. The decision reflected both the technical realities of what they'd learned and broader market forces reshaping the launch industry.

SpaceX's Falcon-9 rideshare missions had fundamentally changed the economics of small satellite deployment. By launching many small satellites in a single flight, SpaceX could offer pricing that made dedicated launches on smaller rockets economically difficult to justify. Companies with smaller launch vehicles saw the need to either diversify or pivot toward larger, more cost-competitive systems.

Relativity's answer was Terran R: substantially larger than Terran 1, partially constructed using the same 3D printing technologies but deliberately moving away from additive manufacturing for components like fuel tanks—shifting instead toward techniques used by others in the industry. The design transition represented both technological recognition and market adaptation.

Rocket Lab took a similar approach with its Neutron launch vehicle, expanding into satellite hardware services to capture additional revenue streams. The economics of small launch vehicles had shifted decisively toward larger, more versatile rockets capable of carrying heavier payloads.

The pivot was also motivated by what investors saw as the path forward in heavy-lift launch services. Terran R's maximum payload capacity—33,500 kilograms to low Earth orbit when expended, 23,500 kilograms with reusable booster recovery—offered capabilities that could compete directly with Falcon 9 while capturing payloads that previously would have required a dedicated launch.

The company's physical footprint expanded dramatically during this period. In February 2020, Relativity announced an 11,000-square-meter headquarters and factory in Long Beach, California—a facility designed to house both business operations and autonomous development operations that the company planned to build into a modern rocket manufacturing factory. The plan was ambitious: no fixed tooling at all, allowing rapid reconfiguration for different production runs.

That original facility was soon dwarfed by what came next. In June 2021, Relativity announced an additional 93,000-square-meter factory—over one million square feet—set to takeover the former Boeing C-17 production plant in Long Beach beginning January 2022. The new facility would become the manufacturing center for Terran R reusable launch vehicles.

By 2024, with headquarters building completed, the company sought permitting for a 200-foot test stand—a massive vertical testing infrastructure capable of validating full-scale rocket engines before their first orbital flight.

The testing infrastructure was actually in place long before that announcement. In March 2018, Relativity Space signed a 20-year lease at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi—NASA's primary rocket testing facility—where it could test engine components and eventually full-scale Aeon 1 rocket engines. The lease required creating approximately 200 jobs and investing $59 million over nine years, with an option to extend for another decade.

By June 2019, Relativity expanded its work at Stennis to include exclusive use of 20,000 square meters within Building 9101—dedicated space for full-scale engine testing. Late in 2023, the company extended its presence further through agreements to perform vertical testing on Terran R at a dedicated test stand.

But the manufacturing and testing facilities alone weren't enough without launch infrastructure. In January 2019, Relativity Space won a competitive bidding process with the United States Air Force to build and operate Launch Complex 16 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida—a site of historical significance that had previously launched Titan and Pershing ballistic missiles.

By April 2024, initial groundwork for the Terran R launch pad was complete, with water line installation in progress. The company planned a second launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California—capable of launching payloads into polar orbits and Sun-synchronous orbits including Iridium satellite launches between 2023 and 2030.

The pivot away from pure additive manufacturing wasn't just about the rockets themselves—it was also reflected in leadership. On March 10, 2025, Relativity announced that former Google head Eric Schmidt replaced Tim Ellis as CEO of the company. Ellis remained on the board but took a controlling interest through what was reported as his personal investment.

Schmidt's appointment represented a dramatic shift: someone who built one of the world's largest technology companies now running an aerospace startup that has yet to successfully reach orbit with any launch vehicle—but which holds over $1 billion in binding launch contracts. The move signaled both confidence and experience in manufacturing at scale.

Terran R remains under development, with its first stage using 13 Aeon R gas generator cycle engines using liquid oxygen and methane propellant—nine capable of gimbaling, four fixed. The second stage is designed for vacuum-optimized performance. The company has announced plans to launch the rocket for the first time in late 2026.

The technology choices reflect what Relativity's leaders learned from Terran 1: moving away from additive manufacturing for certain components while maintaining it for others—striking a balance between the original vision and practical aerospace realities.