{"id":17928,"date":"2019-10-01T22:18:29","date_gmt":"2019-10-01T14:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/relativity-space-raises-140m-to-stay-on-track-for-3d-printed-rockets-launch\/"},"modified":"2019-10-01T22:18:29","modified_gmt":"2019-10-01T14:18:29","slug":"relativity-space-raises-140m-to-stay-on-track-for-3d-printed-rockets-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/relativity-space-raises-140m-to-stay-on-track-for-3d-printed-rockets-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"Relativity Space raises $140M to stay on track for 3D-printed rocket\u2019s launch"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_524285\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-524285\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-524285\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/191001-relativity-630x473.jpg\" alt=\"Relativity Space co-founders\" width=\"630\" height=\"473\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/191001-relativity-630x473.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/191001-relativity-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/191001-relativity-1260x945.jpg 1260w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-524285\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Relativity Space co-founders Tim Ellis and Jordan Noone check out a fully 3D-printed rocket segment at the company\u2019s L.A. headquarters. (Relativity Space Photo via Business Wire)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Four years after it was founded in Seattle, Relativity Space has landed its biggest infusion of capital to date \u2014 and says the $140 million investment will fully fund its drive to launch the world\u2019s first all-3D-printed rocket into orbit and enter commercial service in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>The company, now based in Los Angeles, was founded by two rocket engineers with connections to Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture: CEO Tim Ellis, who worked on propulsion development and 3-D printing at Blue Origin\u2019s headquarters in Kent, Wash.; and chief technology officer Jordan Noone, who was a Blue Origin intern and went on to work at SpaceX as a propulsion development engineer.<\/p>\n<p>The newly announced $140 million Series C funding round was led by Bond and Tribe Capital. The new investors include a few well-known personalities from the worlds of technology and entertainment, including former Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff, former Disney President Michael Ovitz and actor Jared Leto (who played a high-tech villain in \u201cBlade Runner 2049\u2033).<\/p>\n<p>Others in on the round include new investors Lee Fixel and Republic Labs, plus current investors Playground Global, Y Combinator, Social Capital and Mark Cuban.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRelativity was founded with the long-term vision of 3-D printing the first rocket made on Mars and expanding the possibilities for human experience in our lifetime,\u201d Ellis said in a news release. With the close of our Series C funding, we are now one step closer to that vision by being fully funded to launch Terran 1 to orbit as the world\u2019s first entirely 3D printed rocket.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Relativity Space manufactures rocket parts at its L.A. facility, using a room-sized, metal 3D-printing machine known as Stargate. The aim is to produce a launch-ready Terran 1 rocket, with a 10-foot (3-meter) payload fairing capable of sending up to 2,750 pounds to low Earth orbit, from raw materials in less than 60 days. The company has said the target price for a launch is $10 million.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"These Engineers Want to 3D Print an Entire Rocket in 60 Days\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/R5mhUm6NzqE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are excited to complete the development of Terran 1, providing an entirely new value chain for our customers. As we build Terran 1 we will continue to expand the Stargate factory, achieving another milestone toward our long-term vision,\u201c Noone said.<\/p>\n<p>The company says it\u2019s conducted more than 200 hot-fire tests of its Aeon 1 rocket engine at NASA\u2019s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. It\u2019s also secured access to Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 16 in Florida, and plans to secure a launch site for missions to polar and sun-synchronous orbits by the end of this year.<\/p>\n<p>Seattle-based Spaceflight is among Relativity\u2019s announced customers.<\/p>\n<p>Relativity Space\u2019s workforce currently stands at 110 employees. The newly announced Series C round comes in the wake of a $35 million Series B round conducted last year, and brings the company\u2019s total funding to more than $185 million. The new investment will go toward expanding the company\u2019s facilities in Los Angeles, Mississippi and Florida.<\/p>\n<p>In today\u2019s news release, Bond co-founder and general partner Noah Knauf said his firm was \u201cthrilled to invest behind Relativity\u2019s world-class team.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe believe the Stargate factory is a template for the future of aerospace manufacturing and provides Relativity\u2019s commercial customers, and eventually humanity, a faster, more reliable, and lower cost way to shuttle important resources from earth to outer space,\u201d Knauf said.<\/p>\n<p>Arjun Sethi, co-founder and general partner at Tribe Capital, drew a parallel to the computer industry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAccelerating speed in the design, manufacture and delivery of rockets will become the Moore\u2019s Law of space travel and exploration,\u201d Sethi said. \u201cBy optimizing manufacturing for speed, Relativity will increase the frequency of launches in service of growing commercial and consumer needs in space. Just as doubling microprocessor speeds enabled the personal computing revolution, Relativity will push forward an entire ecosystem of hardware and software systems to take humanity beyond Earth\u2019s orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Relativity Space co-founders Tim Ellis and Jordan Noone check out a fully 3D-printed rocket segment at the company\u2019s L.A. headquarters. (Relativity Space Photo via Business Wire) Four years after it was founded in Seattle, Relativity Space has landed its biggest infusion of capital to date \u2014 and says the $140 million investment will fully fund [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4585,1685],"class_list":["post-17928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-3-d-printing","tag-relativity-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17928"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}