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  • Okay, so one of the most interesting kind of weirdest

  • work from home stories has to be this company called,

  • Relativity Space.

  • They are a rocket startup in Southern California,

  • just outside of downtown Los Angeles.

  • They are actually trying to 3D print an entire rocket

  • using these giant machines

  • that are sort of Westworld-like.

  • In the midst of this pandemic

  • and the work from home situation,

  • their technology actually looks like an advantage,

  • a major advantage in that they've been able

  • to keep running these robots autonomously,

  • just having one person go by the factory

  • every now and again, to keep the robots fed.

  • To explain how all this works and the company's vision,

  • We're gonna talk to Tim Ellis,

  • who is the co founder and CEO of Relativity.

  • I obviously, I cover the space industry really close,

  • and it's this very exciting time.

  • Space X just had a historic launch.

  • And then there's this flood of other rocket startups

  • that are coming.

  • And I've been following you guys for a while,

  • but you guys are a little bit different

  • than the other rocket startups.

  • Can you sort of explain what Relativity does.

  • I founded Relativity back at the beginning of 2016.

  • And my co founder was actually working at Space X

  • on the Crew Dragon Program.

  • I was at Blue Origin.

  • The problem we saw in the industry is that

  • really for the last 60 years, no one's actually changed

  • how rockets are manufactured.

  • There's re-usability.

  • there's other rocket technologies,

  • which are new and very disruptive,

  • but we really felt 3D printing a whole rocket

  • was gonna be the next big disruption in the industry.

  • If you go somewhere even like Space X,

  • which is a super modern aerospace company,

  • they do 3D print some stuff.

  • It is particularly around the engines,

  • but a lot of stuff is done by hand.

  • Yes, that's right.

  • Other companies we've seen are probably

  • in the single digits,

  • maybe as low as 0.1% of the rocket

  • is actually 3D printed by mass.

  • We're actually targeting printing 95% of our rocket,

  • so almost everything other than the electronics.

  • We're targeting, not just printing 95% of the rocket,

  • but doing it from raw material to a finished rocket,

  • in the factory in only 60 days.

  • And that compares to about two years

  • in a traditional factory.

  • The 3D printers that we ended up developing

  • entirely in house use a big robots

  • that come from industrial car automation

  • or other sort of industrial automation.

  • And then we've actually had to write our own software.

  • And then all of the control algorithms

  • to basically, wherever the robot moves around,

  • we have a metal wire that gets fed in,

  • and then we actually use plasma to melt the wire,

  • and then that solidifies.

  • And so essentially now we can code the robots

  • using pretty sophisticated controls.

  • Wherever the robot moves around,

  • we can actually print our fuel tank.

  • And it's very, very fast.

  • As far as like why somebody hasn't done this before.

  • I remember when you guys got started.

  • I think even still today, maybe it's fair to say,

  • I mean, there's people who are skeptical of this approach.

  • Obviously there's rockets there.

  • It's a controlled explosion.

  • Can you 3D print something that's stable enough?

  • We've actually already produced a full scale,

  • second stage structure with the common dome

  • and done proof testing to show that it can hold the pressure

  • and stresses of flight.

  • Then we've done something like 300 engine tests

  • to date, all 3D printed.

  • So we're actually proving the tech works.

  • During the pandemic,

  • I know a lot of the aerospace companies

  • were able to stay relatively open

  • if they were doing sort of stuff that had

  • like a national security kind of implication

  • or national interest.

  • What was it like for you guys?

  • Have you been able to have employees in the factory?

  • We actually took a pretty proactive approach

  • to the pandemic, so around March 6th to March 9th,

  • we actually started making everyone go home

  • and work from home.

  • So people unplugged their desktop.

  • So we're actually a very cloud forward company

  • in our architecture,

  • which lets us operate the 3D printers remotely anyway.

  • So we were actually very well prepped for that,

  • prioritizing the health and safety of our employees.

  • We are deemed essential business,

  • but we actually never had to have more than one person

  • in the factory at a time to keep printing.

  • And we've also seen a very minimal supply chain disruptions,

  • because we have extremely few suppliers.

  • There's really just not that many processes that we need

  • to build a rocket since we're printing everything.

  • We have very few raw materials.

  • It's actually only three raw metals for the entire rocket.

  • It's so, so Elan's long stated goal is

  • to eventually create a human colony on Mars,

  • and I know you have Mars aspirations as well.

  • I mean reflected on why Jordan

  • and I had started the company.

  • We had this core theory that Space X was going to Mars.

  • I'm actually super confident that they're going to,

  • and I'm really inspired by that.

  • But every animation I saw had the astronauts fly there

  • and then they would land,

  • and then the ladder would roll down,

  • and then it would fade to black.

  • And that became this thing that stuck in my mind that,

  • "Man there need to be dozens to hundreds

  • "of companies working on different pieces

  • "of the puzzle of going to Mars."

  • And so that's where we came up with our vision as a company,

  • which is to 3D print the first rocket made on Mars.

  • I'm sure rocket's not the first thing we're gonna make.

  • We're probably gonna make water storage tanks,

  • habitat vessels, spare parts,

  • other things that just help early settlements get going.

  • How old are you now?

  • I just turned 30--

  • Just turned 30--

  • A few weeks ago, yup.

  • And so what age do you expect to be

  • when you 3D print your first water storage tank on Mars?

  • Yeah, honestly, I think it's actually gonna happen faster

  • than some of the human space flight can.

  • So I think it could actually happen

  • within a decade, honestly.

  • My life philosophy has been

  • if the future's not really happening fast enough,

  • well, why don't we just create it?

  • We could actually be that company that makes this happen.

Okay, so one of the most interesting kind of weirdest

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SpaceX竞争对手正在印制自己的火箭(The SpaceX Competitor is Printing Its Rockets)

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    joey joey 發佈於 2021 年 05 月 17 日
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