February 22, 2024 • 36 mins
Tim Ellis is the co-founder and CEO of Relativity Space, a company with a unique approach to manufacturing rockets. Tim’s problem is this: How can you use 3D printing to make rockets more efficiently? Eventually, Tim wants to send a rocket – and printer – to Mars to build the first Martian industrial base.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Tim Ellis builds rockets for a living. He started
his career at Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by
Jeff Bezos, and then in twenty fifteen he left to
start his own rocket company. The company is called Relativity Space,
and last year they launched their first rocket. The launch
(00:37):
did not go exactly as planned.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Launch day.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
A lot of emotions certainly come up thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
There's really no way to describe it.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
It was actually a new emotion I don't think I've
felt in my entire life.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem? The
show where I talk to people who are trying to
make technological progress. Tim Ellis is really working on a
couple of problems. He's working on a short term problem,
which is how can you use three D printing to
make rockets more cheaply and quickly? And then he's working
on a long term problem, which is how can three
(01:20):
D printing help humans colonize Mars? Trying not to start
with the email to Mark Cuban, but I can't, so
tell me about your email to Mark Cuban.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I really was convinced that three D printing was going
to be a highly disruptive technology and wanted to go
try to print a whole rocket, but we didn't really
have anything At the time I emailed to Mark Cuban,
I actually had not even emailed anybody else with a
relativity space email address. That actually was the first email
I ever since. So I created the relativity Space email
(01:55):
address to email Mark Cuban. That the idea really came.
I mean, I am from Plano, Texas. It's a suburb
more at the Dallas so I certainly grew up hearing
a lot about Mark Cuban with Dallas Mavericks. And I
had a friend at USC in Los Angeles, where I
went to college, that was an entrepreneur, and I remember
(02:16):
he had a blog where I think at one point
he just said, you know, Mark Cuban does actually answer
cold email. So it sort of heard about this, you know,
phenomenon from that. So I thought, well, you know, I
don't know any investors, actually don't really know anything about
starting the company, but I know I need to raise money.
I didn't know how to do it, so I just thought, well,
I'm going to try emailing Mark Cuban and let's see
(02:38):
if it works. So I didn't have his email address,
So I had to guess twenty different versions of his
email address, you know, Mark at Dallasmavericks dot com, Mark
dot Cuban at Dallas Mavericks dot com, you know mcuban
at Dallas Mavericks. And then I did Gmail. Does anybody
have Hotmail or Yahoo anymore?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I mean, let's be my mom does, but let's be honest.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
So it would be amazing if Mark Cuban, Yeah, Mark
Cuban heady.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So so you guess all these email addresses.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
And then you know, from there, I knew he's a
busy guy, so I couldn't write a lot of words,
and so I just explained, you know, I'm from Plano, Texas,
like so I led with that, and then you know,
quickly talked about that I worked with Jeff Bezos personally,
which is true for the three D printing projects, so
kind of getting him hooked, making him realize I'm not
(03:29):
so far away from him, and then showing credibility and legitimacy,
especially because I was only twenty five. But he replied
back in five minutes and then said, well, what do
you want from me? And so it quickly got into
the ask and then you know that almost felt like
being on Shark Tank, I guess virtually. But yeah, you know,
(03:50):
we said we were raising half a million dollars. Even
that amount was a little bit pulled out of thin
air because again we kind of just started the company
and not even really started yet, like we hadn't even
incorporated yet.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
It really was the first team all we sent.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
So yeah, I asked him for one hundred thousand dollars
of a half a million dollar funding rounds, and then
you know, he replied back almost immediately again asking you know,
why does melon do this? Had a you know, kind
of straightforward answered like he's just focused on other things
(04:24):
and this is complimentary.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
And then he.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Wrote back, We'll just do the full half a million dollars,
like he just gave us the whole five hundred k.
We've now done six funding rounds, we've raised one point
three three billion dollars, and he's invested in every single one.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Were you surprised by his reply when he said he'd
give you five hundred dollars?
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Yeah, hell, yeah, of course, yes absolutely. I Mean I
now know just how hard fundraising is, and it's a
complete an omelet.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
So at that time, you're starting this company, like, what's
your dream?
Speaker 3 (05:01):
So we wrote on the back of a Starbucks napkin
all or Starbucks receipts, I guess, really kind of showing
the relationship between three D printing a rocket and then
one day, how we see this technology helping build an
industrial base on Mars. So I thought, you know, really
a lot of the inspiration behind starting Relativity space came
(05:24):
from this realization that SpaceX had landed rockets and docked
with the International Space Station. They were a thirteen year
old company. It was super exciting to watch what they
had done, even when I was at Blue Origin. But
despite this once in a generation's success, they're still the
only company in the world that wanted to make humanity
multiplanetary and put a million people on Mars. So I
(05:47):
thought it was inevitable there has to be a second. Clearly,
if we're going to put a million people on Mars,
there will be you know, dozens to hundreds.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Of companies that make this happen.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
So I thought, heck, we could be the like, we
are going to be the second company to go try
to put a million people on Mars too, because there's
clearly going to have to be a person that builds
the company that builds all the industrial base equipment, you know,
initially maybe spare parts and other things. So yeah, we
could we could be those founders, and that was something
(06:18):
that resonated a lot with me, and it's still true today.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
So if the dream is to put a million people
on Mars, when you're starting, what's the what's the how
you get there?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Point?
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, Like, what are you actually setting out to do
in practical terms to achieve that?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Of course?
Speaker 3 (06:34):
So you know, really the first major goal, which has
now become Chapter one of Relativity, which we actually just completed,
was to three D print an entire rocket, and then
the second big piece was to develop the world's largest
metal three D printer.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
So tell me about the sort of three D printing
dream you know, when you're starting out, what's yeah, why
why is three D printing sort of the core kind
of technical piece or manufacturing piece that you're focused on.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Early on, Really, what we thought was three D printing
was more of an automation technology, and this was the
kind of uns the thing, and I was certainly a
user of the technology. By the way, like all of
the parts and products I designed, a blue egin used
off the shelf metal three D printers. So and that's
why I started the three D printing division there, because
I really, for myself saw firsthand just how great it
(07:22):
was to design products that would normally be twenty different
parts and you could print them as one piece and
so then you only had to print a single piece,
and it was a lot faster and cheaper, and it
still functioned basically the same, but the key thing is
it looked super different. So in order to combine twenty
parts together and print them, you don't just take an
existing product and press print. It really has to be
(07:45):
designed from the very beginning for this technology. And I
think that was the key thing that made me realize
we had to start our own company because a printed
rocket and all the way you test it, qualify it,
make sure it actually works the material science, like so
many pieces needed to be developed from scratch to make
(08:05):
a whole printed rocket happen.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
You can't just say, yeah, let's make rocket the way
we're making it, but instead of using machined parts, let's
three D print them. Like that's not the way it works.
You have to sort of re engineer the rocket from
the ground exactly when you're starting the company, what's your
thesis simply for why a three D printed rocket would
be better than a traditionally manufactured rocket.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
A three D printed rocket, the thesis really was, we
can reduce the part count by two orders of magnitude,
so one hundred times fewer parts. That really comes from
part count consolidation, and you print them together as single pieces.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
We believed we could build a rocket very quickly.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
So initially the tagline was building a rocket in sixty
days and this sixty days later we could build another version,
and sixty days after that another version. So this is
the north star of where we see the tech getting
to and then the others cost So clearly all of
those those two things really help us reduce the cost
of launch, and that that was really it. I mean,
(09:10):
at the end of the day, people that are building
satellites and need rocket launches, which is our primary business model,
just want something that's reliable, It can actually launch their
payload and has enough payload capacity, it's cheap, and it
shows up on time. It's a pretty sure.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
They don't care how it's built right, It doesn't matter
to them. They just wanted to go to space and
not blow up and.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Be cheap yep.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
So it's as you said, going on eight years ago
that you started the company. I know you had your
first launch earlier this year. So just to jump to
the moment, like just before that launch, tell me about
what you had built. Tell me about the factory and
about the three D printers.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Sure to the metal printer's relativity is built. Are the
largest in the world. We had several generations in our factory.
When you walk into them, it looks like Westworld a bit.
So there's a big robotic arm, six axis industrial robotic arm.
There's a print head at the end of it. That
print head deposits metal and uses it was lasers at
(10:17):
the time, but it's also plasma arc energy. So you basically,
you know, using electricity, melt the wire and wherever the
robot our moves, you just deposit molten metal and it solidifies.
There's a whole of course control system. There's a bunch
of sensors that are constantly monitoring this.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
How big is it.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
It's about thirty five feet tall. For the latest versions
can print up to eighteen feet diameter.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
It's huge.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Can print a rocket basically, I mean eighteen feet diameters
like the tube of the rocket.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Yes, I mean eighteen feet is the diameter of our
next reusable vehicle, which is three point thirty million pounds
of thrust.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
So one big yeah diameter, the big one.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
But they also built the ones that we launched, which
is seven and a half feet wide. We had quite
a few of these printers, so it really just looked
like a field of robot arms, you know, melting metal
and in a very precise way, very controlled, very high quality.
It was actually quite a quiet factory because of this.
You know, there really was not a lot of uh sound,
(11:25):
the hustle and bustle. Certainly, that's very high energy. When
you walk in a rocket factory that's actively building a rocket.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
You know, there's there's.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
A lot of people around, but overall less than you
would normally have. And uh, you know, certainly something that
looks like the future. There's no question about that. This
looks like the future.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
So is there an example of a thing that initially
didn't work, didn't work the way you thought it was
going to work, and you had to figure out a
different way to make it work.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Yeah, Well one was you know, of course, in rocket
engine development, you blow up rocket engines in fact, I
actually encouraged the team to push hard enough to blowing
up at some point.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
You don't like.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
If you're if you're not blowing them up, you're you're
not really testing them exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Now, you don't want to blow up the test stand
because that tends to tends to be a.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Much right amount of blowing up.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Yeah, it's a slower, slower recovery, but blowing up a
rocket engine, now, Yeah, there's different failure modes. Some are
more catastrophic than others. We were actually fairly lucky. We
didn't have any that were insanely bad. We had one
that was, you know, kind of kind of rough, really
early in the program. I think it was our fourth
(12:38):
ever chamber tests. We were a tiny, tiny company that
particular one. So I remember watching the flame down in
the flame trench slowly creep up, a little drip of
methane that was still still kind of dripping from the
engine at the end of the test, and you.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Just fuse almost yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Almost almost, and you just watch this flame, you know,
in the slow mode video, creep up, creep up, and
then right when it goes in the engine chamber, it
was just like a bomb, just went off. Now, of
course nobody was hurt. Everything was safe. We got to
give those caveats, but it was Yeah, it's pretty crazy video.
But it took a few months to go fix that
(13:19):
and to figure it out. So we're lucky at the
time we had three engine tests that had been successful
before that, so we knew it wasn't a fundamental problem.
It was something we could fix. I think if you
blow up your very first engine, that can be kind
of hard because then you don't know exactly does it
fundamentally work or not.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
So tell me about launch day. Right, this was whatever
seven ish years after you launched the company. You're ready
to launch the first rocket. Tell me about that day.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Launch day.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
A lot of emotions certainly come up thinking about it.
There's really no way to describe it. It was actually
a new emotion. I don't think I've felt in my
entire life. It was at night, so we had to
launch at night due to the air traffic kind of coordination.
It was around spring break, so we wanted to be
a good kind of airspace, you know, citizen, so to speak.
(14:12):
We weren't really sure what it was going to look like.
By the way, so this is also the first methane
fueled rocket to ever attempt orbit a launch outside of China.
I'm China does not show photos or videos of launches.
So this literally was the first time the world was
going to see a methane fueled rocket fly. That was
the other big thing. So we didn't know what it
was going to look like as it was launching to orbit,
(14:34):
and so when it you know and ended up. Of course,
a lot of the activity at this point we had,
you know, about a thousand people at the company, but
so the team didn't need me to do anything. Like
they're extremely coordinated, trained, they know exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
There's it was at caj.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Getting in the way at that point, I mean bothering people.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
No, I think I do a good job staying out
of the way. I was just enjoying it. I think
that was the biggest thing. You know, certainly I was
on the hook for whatever happened. To be clear, this
is a first launch. No company had ever reached orbit
in the world in history on a very first launch,
and the major is intense, like you are getting kind
(15:18):
of constant pings over the radio hearing as we're loading propellants.
You know, preparing the rocket for flight. You know, each
step there's different troubleshooting and things that are happening live
because you know, a lot is automated, but it is
all happening for the first time. You have tens of
thousands of sensors and data channels all over the rocket.
It is a very complex coordination. So even though people
(15:42):
are well trained, there's on the fly, you know, is
this temperature okay? On the batteries, is you know, it's
out of bounds?
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Like is it okay?
Speaker 3 (15:49):
So there's like whole teams of engineers just going and
doing calculations and coming back and saying yes, we're good
to go. You know, the winds are a big issue,
so we're launching weather balloons and tracking wind data to
make sure the winds aren't too strong, not at the
ground level but way up in the atmosphere because that's
a huge factor of launch success. There's boats and we
(16:10):
have Coastguard people chasing boats that are in the violation
of the Keypout zone with like you know, we had
like people with AK forty seven's trying to tell them
like hey, you're you know, illegally in the zone, Like
you got to get out of there. We had a
Navy plane takeoff from an aircraft carrier in the middle
of you know, almost the launch windows. It's counting down,
(16:32):
so it's kind of controlled, very very controlled, but very
intense because all of these things are popping up, even
at the point of you know, getting down.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
To just a few minutes to the to the launch countdown.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
And just to be clear, this is purely a test flight, right,
there's no commercial payload on it. There's no people on it.
Basically just launch in the run.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Yeah, correct, this one. You know, some companies decide to
have a payload on the first launch.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
We decided not to.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
We ended up flying the first the very first shavings
of a three D printed part that we ever made
seven years ago. The idea behind that was, you know,
all of the failure we had to overcome to get
to this point, like we're launching that story. I had
my Starbucks receipt, you know, every employee got a photo
(17:21):
that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
But yeah, no, Palin, So okay, so it's time, what like,
it's time for the racket to launch.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
So as sixty seconds was counting down, the energy is high.
Now we had It's very normal for a rocket launch.
At first, we had two other attempts that happened in daylight.
They got very very close to launching. Actually one of
them even ignited all the nine engines and then aborted.
So at the time that you're several minutes close to
the flight, it's really one hundred percent automated, and then
(17:51):
once you're under seventy seconds, it literally is automated, so
if anything happens, it just.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Aboords and safes itself. It's all software driven.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
So we had had a few other launch attempts that
just you know, a sensor was off or some temperatures
slightly drifted because a lot of complex things are happening,
and those final stuff twenty seconds, so that's also actually
contributing to the anxiety and the you know, adrenaline is
you actually don't yet know is it definitely going off
or definitely not. Of course, it's counting down, so in
(18:20):
the engines light it holds down for several seconds until
they get up to full thrust. There's a bunch of
health checks, you know, which are all automated on the rocket,
and then there's the final command that sends which has release.
So right when what are called the rocket holdbacks or
hold downs release back. Then the rocket moved up and
(18:42):
I saw ice, you know, start kind of falling off
of it all over the place because it's really cold propellant,
so there's ice all over it. So this ice just
like you know, kind of cheers off of it and
looks like a star dust or something coming off. So
right when that happened, you know, the engines had already
been let. It's like this crazy blue and purple and
orange flame like methane rockets, like really really insane compared
(19:05):
to normal rockets.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
I waited for that moment.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
I absolutely had planned I was going to run outside,
so I had the path already set and kind of
like very very quickly but also careful not to trip
and fall. Went out the door and went around the corner,
and I just remember the feeling of opening the door,
and right when you open it to go outside, it
just nails you in the chest. I mean, rockets, of
(19:30):
course are really intensely powerful. I'd seen engine tests before,
but yeah, you just immediately feel this like fluttering kind
of almost like somebody's pounding your chest a little bit.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
The sound is the sound that ye yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Loud, super loud, and then I turned around the corner,
so I basically heard it before I saw it. Then
turned around the corner, and then you know, just a
hundred or so feet in the air, was just this
rocket flying and there's a crazy bright blue flame that
looks like looking at a star, you know, being launched
to space. I mean, videos really don't do it just
(20:08):
it is. It is so so much brighter and so
much cooler looking in person. And then you just feel
energy in the air, Like the air almost feels dense
and thick, and it sounds like a whip cracking plus
sub base, you know, just at eleven out of ten intensity,
so it feels alive like that. That's what's so cool.
(20:28):
Microphones and video really just don't capture the feeling of
a live launch because it's like, yeah, just very visceral.
And then of course people around me are like screaming
and cheering and crying. You know, we like literally crying
like viscerally and say, oh my god, oh my God.
Like it's like a pretty religiously spiritually kind of intense
(20:50):
experience just because all the hard work and tears go
into it. It was out of our control at that point.
The rocket flies autonomously, nobody can do anything. But we
needed to get past eighty seconds. So that was the
goal of this mission, was to prove the three D
print instructures were actually strong enough to serve vibe and flight.
That was the very unique technology. My personal goal was
(21:14):
to get to space. I think, you know, that was
above the company stated goal, but I did really want
to get to space on the first flight and have
a full first stage you know, successful launch and stage separation.
That was really what I wanted. And so, you know,
I was watching kind of the live stream. I had
my iPhone next to me, but also just watching live
(21:35):
but at least on the YouTube live stream. They were
calling out different milestones and I was looking for that
eighty second mark to really make sure, yes, we did it.
So I remember when we passed eighty seconds. You know,
of course, everybody started screaming and cheering because that was
full mission success by what we were concerned with, and
(21:57):
it was still rumbling, it was still definitely visible. It
was just like a bright blue streak that went across
the sky. But then as we made it to space
and then had stage separation, you know that that was
for me the moment where I really started celebrating and
then what happened? Yeah, So then you know, I was
(22:17):
looking at the live stream, it became clear that the
second stage engine didn't light. It tried to light, so
at first I actually thought it did because there's just
some sputtering of flames, but they went out, so it
was clear that that second stage didn't light. We weren't
going to make it all the way to orbit. So
then I went back inside. You know, of course at
(22:39):
that point, the team's mood is much more serious, like
we're in data collection mode, you know, we're working with
the FAA mode to safe everything. Everything there was good.
Then I went down into the basement so kind of
took over where the live stream recording was, and then
just addressed the overall team.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
And what happens to the rocket when the second stage, Like,
does it blow itself up? Does it fall into the sea?
What happened?
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Yeah, it actually just goes and falls in Atlantic Ocean,
So it's way out in the middle of the ocean
at that point, and then we use satellites later to
determine that it, you know, did actually sink. You know,
at that point, it's more than ten thousand feet at
the bottom of the ocean, so you know, we kind
of do all the proper steps to make sure that
(23:27):
things are taken care of from a safety perspective.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
And so you were saying you went and talked to
the company.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah, it was ta talk to the company, address everybody,
and then from that moment after, I felt like then
I was kind of off the hook, you know. So
it's definitely very I was very on up until that point,
and then at that point I could stop and then
just start to let you know what happened sink in.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
We'll be back in a minute to discuss the rocket
that Tim and his colleagues are working on now. Also Mars.
After that test launch, Tim and his colleagues talk to
their customers and potential customers basically companies that want to
(24:19):
launch satellites, and based on those conversations, they decided to
develop a much bigger rocket. The one they're working on
now is two hundred and seventy feet tall, which is
about as tall as a twenty five story building and
more than twice as tall as the rocket they launched
last year.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
So what we're doing for the next three years is
building and testing a ton of hardware so we're constantly
almost every week doing engine testing, collecting data, using that
data to then three D print new versions which slightly
tweak the design. This is really the big competitive advantage
of printing, as you're able to iterate the design very quickly.
(24:57):
So this is really the kind of core principle of
development is doing that first at very small component levels
and then building up more and more into a full
end and then a full rocket stage which would have
thirteen engines on it. We'll actually touch that on the
ground before flying, and then so at the time of flights,
(25:20):
by the time you actually fly the rocket in twenty
twenty six, almost every component on the rocket has already
gone through several flight like environments for a full duration.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
And yet like if history is a guide, it still
probably won't work, right, Like that's how hard it is.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Yeah, reaching orbit on a very first rocket is difficult.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Like, it would be very reasonable for you to do
all this work for three years and for it not
to work the first time, because that's the way it works.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yeah, that wouldn't be a total you know, like Company Ender,
for example, we would plan for that. The chrick is
how do you make a rocket be successful and not
have a government's budget to subsidize it. I mean, so
NASA is successful on first launches all the time. You know,
the Europeans are national security launch vehicles.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Because they spend way more than a private company would
ever spend, correct, because they really don't want it to face.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
So the trick is how do you get a low
cost rocket which is highly reliable to be successful.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
So it's an interesting like optimization problem at some level
of like basically when do you launch, Like, you don't
want to launch too late, weirdly, right, you don't want
to be too sure it's work because that's probably too expensive.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Correct, you have to have a macro view of you know,
the overall company. And ultimately, I think this is a
pretty interesting lesson learned just in the industry on iteration.
So if you look at you know, SpaceX's reliability record
for example, is extraordinarily good. But how you get there
is a different solution. So traditional aerospace, like you mentioned,
(26:58):
needs to get it perfect on the first try.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
So NASA everybody does.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And that's sort of for like governmental political reasons, right,
Like they have a sort of different constituency than a
private company. They're not optimizing for the kind of exactly well,
they're not so cost constrained.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Yeah, that's all true, and optics, you're definitely right, they
have a different incentive structure. But what's interesting is if
you take an approach that we're doing and other commercial
companies do, where you build and test a lot of
hardware on the ground before you actually do the flight,
and then you practice a lot that actually creates a
very robust product.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
So there is.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
A kind of study that I refer to a lot
internally where a professor divided an art class into two
groups that he gave him an hour to make clay pots.
One group he said, make as many claypots as he
possibly can in an hour. The next group he said,
make a perfect clay pot, and so one he said
(27:55):
make as many one was a kind of bid for quality.
But then at the end of it, what he didn't
tell them is he was just going to judge both
groups based on quality. So what was interesting is the
group that made as many as possible, actually, we're almost
always considered higher quality, even though he literally didn't tell
them to make something that looked good.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Reps. Reps are underrated, reps are underrated. Tell me about Mars.
Started out talking about Mars as like the big dream.
Tell me more about your dream for Relativity Space and Mars.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Well, I really want Relativity to be the company that
builds an industrial base on Mars.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Meaning like factories to build stuff on Mars as opposed
to rockets to go to.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Mars exactation too.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
So I thought, well, somebody's got to build the factory.
It has to be small, lightweight, be able to build
a wide range of products with very little human labor
because people on Mars won't be quite abundant, and so
all of those North Star parameters. To find an intelligent
three D printing system. So that was where I got
to this idea that three D printing has to be
(29:03):
a part of building infrastructure on Mars. If it's going
to be a self sustaining city andation.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
What's whatever the first thing a factory like that would make.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Yeah, So I think it's going to start with things
like spare parts and things that potentially break on rockets.
So I imagine most early missions will actually launch some form
of three D printing system really just as a way
to make the mission more robust in case something went wrong,
Because when you're that far away, you know, you are
(29:36):
like nine months away from really getting any extra supplies.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
And is the advantage of three D printing there that like,
ideally you can basically have one three D printer that
can make a very wide range of parts as opposed
to traditional manufacturing where kind of you need one machine
to make one part and it can't make any other
part yep, more or less yep exactly.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
So you can pre you don't need as much pre planning,
and there's a lot more flexibility for what you can build.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
So it's a rocket spare parts factory. Yeah, it's basically
the first I.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Think that's the very first thing that's likely. And we
actually have a relativity a mission that we have a
partnership with the co founder and former CTO of SpaceX,
this guy Tom Mueller. He started his own company. We're
actually planning to launch payload to Mars with with his companies.
We have multiple launch windows through twenty twenty nine to
(30:30):
be able to do it with them.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
And that wait, just to be clear, you're providing the
rocket and he's providing the payload.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Yes, we're providing the rocket, he's providing the Mars transfer vehicle.
The reentry vehicle and the lander. But I do think,
you know, we haven't announced what the payload to will
officially be yet. I personally think it would be very
cool to send some sort of three D printer.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
I think that's probably expected.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
But why that's cool is that would actually be the
first object ever manufactured by a human being off planet.
And I do think that just starting to show we
can build things is a really big part of taking
first step, so to speak, towards one day having a
robust civilization.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
We'll be back in a minute with the Lightning round. Okay,
last thing to do is the Lightning Round, which is
just a bunch of fast questions. So in high school,
(31:38):
I've heard you say that you wanted to be a
writer and that you actually wrote a couple of novels.
So I'm curious, what's your favorite novel?
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Yeah, I think so. The novel that brought me to
Los Angeles is a book by Brady ston ellis called
Less than Zero No Relation to My.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Amazing that that made you want to go to law sex.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
I know it is actually amazing.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
What's one thing you think everybody should know about how
rockets work?
Speaker 2 (32:04):
You know? Okay, this is an interesting one.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
So I think there's a lot of focus on the
rocket in you know, the tube, the structure you can see.
I think what actually makes rockets hard is actually a
lot of the ancillary systems, so pressure. You know, rockets
need to be pressurized, they need to be filled, drained
safe successfully. There's different systems you need to start them
up to shut them down. It is the kind of
(32:29):
details and the non sexy systems that are you know,
firing fire that actually get a lot of conversation time
internally because that's what can make a good rocket versus
one that doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
What's the over under on what year you think you'll
go to space?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
What your I go to space? I think I hope.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
I hope by twenty thirty. I think that would be
pretty pretty soon.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yeah, it's pretty soon.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
That's going seven years. Yeah, it depends on suborbital versus orbital. Yeah,
I think in the next seven years going suborbitally would
be would be possible, definitely.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
You think it will get cheaper or you think you'll
be able to do it because you own a rocket company.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
I think it will get cheaper.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
I certainly hope it'll get cheaper because I know how
much it is now, and it's a it's not the
advertised price.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
It's expensive.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Was it scary to leave Jeff Bezos Rocket Company, to
leave Blue Origin in order to create a new company
that would then compete against Jeff Bezos Rocket Company?
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Well competing it's Jeff is you know, he's a He's
a capable guy. I think Elon maybe more crazy, more
irrational from a competitive standpoint, But now I was inspired.
I think at the time I was twenty five, my
co founder was twenty two. I felt we had very
little to lose by trying. I think in hindsight, I
(33:57):
realized just how young, spunky, kind of naive.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Maybe we worry about the challenges.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
I can definitely tell you it's been way harder than
I ever expected to get to this point.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Maybe necessarily naive, maybe usefully naive.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Oh, definitely an usefully naive. I think that was a
big benefit.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
What's one thing that would surprise me about Jeff Bezos.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
I think Jeff.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Really when Yeah, he is actually really patient. So whether
it was you know, when his vision of Blue Origin
with people living and working in space and industrializing kind
of orbid offer.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
I thought that was the vision, and that.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
He was willing to do it in a way where
even if he doesn't see it in his lifetime, he
doesn't care. That he doesn't care to a degree that
just felt very unusual to me.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Interesting. I mean, you don't think of Jeff Bezos and think, oh, yeah,
that that guy is super patient.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Yeah exactly, but but no, he really is, Yeah, he
really is.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
What do you think? What do you think of the
chances you'll go to Mars before you die?
Speaker 3 (35:12):
I have this vision of myself being very old and
sitting in kind of a beach chair with a beer
under some sort of biodome on Mars, and that being
you know where I kick it during the retirement I guess, kind.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Of like Arizona, but farther.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Yeah, but you know, under a big glass dome exactly
that kind of thing. So, you know, I do have
this vision of being there, but I would go towards
the end of my life. I think it'd be a
cool I mean, could you imagine a crazier end cap
to to your whole life by just being on Mars,
especially since that's something I'm dedicating my life to make
(35:55):
happen now with relativity, I think that'd be you know,
pretty pretty cool ending.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Tim Ellis is the co founder and CEO of Relativity Space.
Today's show was produced by Edith Russlo and Gabriel Hunter Chang.
It was edited by Lydia Jean Kott and engineered by
Sarah Bruguer. You can email us at problem at pushkin
dot fm, and please do email us. I try and
read all the emails. I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be
(36:26):
back next week with another episode of What's Your Problem.
Pushkin. Tim Ellis builds rockets for a living. He started
his career at Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by
Jeff Bezos, and then in twenty fifteen he left to
start his own rocket company. The company is called Relativity Space,
and last year they launched their first rocket. The launch
(00:37):
did not go exactly as planned.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Launch day.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
A lot of emotions certainly come up thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
There's really no way to describe it.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
It was actually a new emotion I don't think I've
felt in my entire life.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem? The
show where I talk to people who are trying to
make technological progress. Tim Ellis is really working on a
couple of problems. He's working on a short term problem,
which is how can you use three D printing to
make rockets more cheaply and quickly? And then he's working
on a long term problem, which is how can three
(01:20):
D printing help humans colonize Mars? Trying not to start
with the email to Mark Cuban, but I can't, so
tell me about your email to Mark Cuban.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I really was convinced that three D printing was going
to be a highly disruptive technology and wanted to go
try to print a whole rocket, but we didn't really
have anything At the time I emailed to Mark Cuban,
I actually had not even emailed anybody else with a
relativity space email address. That actually was the first email
I ever since. So I created the relativity Space email
(01:55):
address to email Mark Cuban. That the idea really came.
I mean, I am from Plano, Texas. It's a suburb
more at the Dallas so I certainly grew up hearing
a lot about Mark Cuban with Dallas Mavericks. And I
had a friend at USC in Los Angeles, where I
went to college, that was an entrepreneur, and I remember
(02:16):
he had a blog where I think at one point
he just said, you know, Mark Cuban does actually answer
cold email. So it sort of heard about this, you know,
phenomenon from that. So I thought, well, you know, I
don't know any investors, actually don't really know anything about
starting the company, but I know I need to raise money.
I didn't know how to do it, so I just thought, well,
I'm going to try emailing Mark Cuban and let's see
(02:38):
if it works. So I didn't have his email address,
So I had to guess twenty different versions of his
email address, you know, Mark at Dallasmavericks dot com, Mark
dot Cuban at Dallas Mavericks dot com, you know mcuban
at Dallas Mavericks. And then I did Gmail. Does anybody
have Hotmail or Yahoo anymore?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I mean, let's be my mom does, but let's be honest.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
So it would be amazing if Mark Cuban, Yeah, Mark
Cuban heady.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So so you guess all these email addresses.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
And then you know, from there, I knew he's a
busy guy, so I couldn't write a lot of words,
and so I just explained, you know, I'm from Plano, Texas,
like so I led with that, and then you know,
quickly talked about that I worked with Jeff Bezos personally,
which is true for the three D printing projects, so
kind of getting him hooked, making him realize I'm not
(03:29):
so far away from him, and then showing credibility and legitimacy,
especially because I was only twenty five. But he replied
back in five minutes and then said, well, what do
you want from me? And so it quickly got into
the ask and then you know that almost felt like
being on Shark Tank, I guess virtually. But yeah, you know,
(03:50):
we said we were raising half a million dollars. Even
that amount was a little bit pulled out of thin
air because again we kind of just started the company
and not even really started yet, like we hadn't even
incorporated yet.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
It really was the first team all we sent.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
So yeah, I asked him for one hundred thousand dollars
of a half a million dollar funding rounds, and then
you know, he replied back almost immediately again asking you know,
why does melon do this? Had a you know, kind
of straightforward answered like he's just focused on other things
(04:24):
and this is complimentary.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
And then he.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Wrote back, We'll just do the full half a million dollars,
like he just gave us the whole five hundred k.
We've now done six funding rounds, we've raised one point
three three billion dollars, and he's invested in every single one.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Were you surprised by his reply when he said he'd
give you five hundred dollars?
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Yeah, hell, yeah, of course, yes absolutely. I Mean I
now know just how hard fundraising is, and it's a
complete an omelet.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
So at that time, you're starting this company, like, what's
your dream?
Speaker 3 (05:01):
So we wrote on the back of a Starbucks napkin
all or Starbucks receipts, I guess, really kind of showing
the relationship between three D printing a rocket and then
one day, how we see this technology helping build an
industrial base on Mars. So I thought, you know, really
a lot of the inspiration behind starting Relativity space came
(05:24):
from this realization that SpaceX had landed rockets and docked
with the International Space Station. They were a thirteen year
old company. It was super exciting to watch what they
had done, even when I was at Blue Origin. But
despite this once in a generation's success, they're still the
only company in the world that wanted to make humanity
multiplanetary and put a million people on Mars. So I
(05:47):
thought it was inevitable there has to be a second. Clearly,
if we're going to put a million people on Mars,
there will be you know, dozens to hundreds.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Of companies that make this happen.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
So I thought, heck, we could be the like, we
are going to be the second company to go try
to put a million people on Mars too, because there's
clearly going to have to be a person that builds
the company that builds all the industrial base equipment, you know,
initially maybe spare parts and other things. So yeah, we
could we could be those founders, and that was something
(06:18):
that resonated a lot with me, and it's still true today.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
So if the dream is to put a million people
on Mars, when you're starting, what's the what's the how
you get there?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Point?
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, Like, what are you actually setting out to do
in practical terms to achieve that?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Of course?
Speaker 3 (06:34):
So you know, really the first major goal, which has
now become Chapter one of Relativity, which we actually just completed,
was to three D print an entire rocket, and then
the second big piece was to develop the world's largest
metal three D printer.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
So tell me about the sort of three D printing
dream you know, when you're starting out, what's yeah, why
why is three D printing sort of the core kind
of technical piece or manufacturing piece that you're focused on.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Early on, Really, what we thought was three D printing
was more of an automation technology, and this was the
kind of uns the thing, and I was certainly a
user of the technology. By the way, like all of
the parts and products I designed, a blue egin used
off the shelf metal three D printers. So and that's
why I started the three D printing division there, because
I really, for myself saw firsthand just how great it
(07:22):
was to design products that would normally be twenty different
parts and you could print them as one piece and
so then you only had to print a single piece,
and it was a lot faster and cheaper, and it
still functioned basically the same, but the key thing is
it looked super different. So in order to combine twenty
parts together and print them, you don't just take an
existing product and press print. It really has to be
(07:45):
designed from the very beginning for this technology. And I
think that was the key thing that made me realize
we had to start our own company because a printed
rocket and all the way you test it, qualify it,
make sure it actually works the material science, like so
many pieces needed to be developed from scratch to make
(08:05):
a whole printed rocket happen.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
You can't just say, yeah, let's make rocket the way
we're making it, but instead of using machined parts, let's
three D print them. Like that's not the way it works.
You have to sort of re engineer the rocket from
the ground exactly when you're starting the company, what's your
thesis simply for why a three D printed rocket would
be better than a traditionally manufactured rocket.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
A three D printed rocket, the thesis really was, we
can reduce the part count by two orders of magnitude,
so one hundred times fewer parts. That really comes from
part count consolidation, and you print them together as single pieces.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
We believed we could build a rocket very quickly.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
So initially the tagline was building a rocket in sixty
days and this sixty days later we could build another version,
and sixty days after that another version. So this is
the north star of where we see the tech getting
to and then the others cost So clearly all of
those those two things really help us reduce the cost
of launch, and that that was really it. I mean,
(09:10):
at the end of the day, people that are building
satellites and need rocket launches, which is our primary business model,
just want something that's reliable, It can actually launch their
payload and has enough payload capacity, it's cheap, and it
shows up on time. It's a pretty sure.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
They don't care how it's built right, It doesn't matter
to them. They just wanted to go to space and
not blow up and.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Be cheap yep.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
So it's as you said, going on eight years ago
that you started the company. I know you had your
first launch earlier this year. So just to jump to
the moment, like just before that launch, tell me about
what you had built. Tell me about the factory and
about the three D printers.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Sure to the metal printer's relativity is built. Are the
largest in the world. We had several generations in our factory.
When you walk into them, it looks like Westworld a bit.
So there's a big robotic arm, six axis industrial robotic arm.
There's a print head at the end of it. That
print head deposits metal and uses it was lasers at
(10:17):
the time, but it's also plasma arc energy. So you basically,
you know, using electricity, melt the wire and wherever the
robot our moves, you just deposit molten metal and it solidifies.
There's a whole of course control system. There's a bunch
of sensors that are constantly monitoring this.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
How big is it.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
It's about thirty five feet tall. For the latest versions
can print up to eighteen feet diameter.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
It's huge.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Can print a rocket basically, I mean eighteen feet diameters
like the tube of the rocket.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Yes, I mean eighteen feet is the diameter of our
next reusable vehicle, which is three point thirty million pounds
of thrust.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
So one big yeah diameter, the big one.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
But they also built the ones that we launched, which
is seven and a half feet wide. We had quite
a few of these printers, so it really just looked
like a field of robot arms, you know, melting metal
and in a very precise way, very controlled, very high quality.
It was actually quite a quiet factory because of this.
You know, there really was not a lot of uh sound,
(11:25):
the hustle and bustle. Certainly, that's very high energy. When
you walk in a rocket factory that's actively building a rocket.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
You know, there's there's.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
A lot of people around, but overall less than you
would normally have. And uh, you know, certainly something that
looks like the future. There's no question about that. This
looks like the future.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
So is there an example of a thing that initially
didn't work, didn't work the way you thought it was
going to work, and you had to figure out a
different way to make it work.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Yeah, Well one was you know, of course, in rocket
engine development, you blow up rocket engines in fact, I
actually encouraged the team to push hard enough to blowing
up at some point.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
You don't like.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
If you're if you're not blowing them up, you're you're
not really testing them exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Now, you don't want to blow up the test stand
because that tends to tends to be a.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Much right amount of blowing up.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Yeah, it's a slower, slower recovery, but blowing up a
rocket engine, now, Yeah, there's different failure modes. Some are
more catastrophic than others. We were actually fairly lucky. We
didn't have any that were insanely bad. We had one
that was, you know, kind of kind of rough, really
early in the program. I think it was our fourth
(12:38):
ever chamber tests. We were a tiny, tiny company that
particular one. So I remember watching the flame down in
the flame trench slowly creep up, a little drip of
methane that was still still kind of dripping from the
engine at the end of the test, and you.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Just fuse almost yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Almost almost, and you just watch this flame, you know,
in the slow mode video, creep up, creep up, and
then right when it goes in the engine chamber, it
was just like a bomb, just went off. Now, of
course nobody was hurt. Everything was safe. We got to
give those caveats, but it was Yeah, it's pretty crazy video.
But it took a few months to go fix that
(13:19):
and to figure it out. So we're lucky at the
time we had three engine tests that had been successful
before that, so we knew it wasn't a fundamental problem.
It was something we could fix. I think if you
blow up your very first engine, that can be kind
of hard because then you don't know exactly does it
fundamentally work or not.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
So tell me about launch day. Right, this was whatever
seven ish years after you launched the company. You're ready
to launch the first rocket. Tell me about that day.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Launch day.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
A lot of emotions certainly come up thinking about it.
There's really no way to describe it. It was actually
a new emotion. I don't think I've felt in my
entire life. It was at night, so we had to
launch at night due to the air traffic kind of coordination.
It was around spring break, so we wanted to be
a good kind of airspace, you know, citizen, so to speak.
(14:12):
We weren't really sure what it was going to look like.
By the way, so this is also the first methane
fueled rocket to ever attempt orbit a launch outside of China.
I'm China does not show photos or videos of launches.
So this literally was the first time the world was
going to see a methane fueled rocket fly. That was
the other big thing. So we didn't know what it
was going to look like as it was launching to orbit,
(14:34):
and so when it you know and ended up. Of course,
a lot of the activity at this point we had,
you know, about a thousand people at the company, but
so the team didn't need me to do anything. Like
they're extremely coordinated, trained, they know exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
There's it was at caj.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Getting in the way at that point, I mean bothering people.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
No, I think I do a good job staying out
of the way. I was just enjoying it. I think
that was the biggest thing. You know, certainly I was
on the hook for whatever happened. To be clear, this
is a first launch. No company had ever reached orbit
in the world in history on a very first launch,
and the major is intense, like you are getting kind
(15:18):
of constant pings over the radio hearing as we're loading propellants.
You know, preparing the rocket for flight. You know, each
step there's different troubleshooting and things that are happening live
because you know, a lot is automated, but it is
all happening for the first time. You have tens of
thousands of sensors and data channels all over the rocket.
It is a very complex coordination. So even though people
(15:42):
are well trained, there's on the fly, you know, is
this temperature okay? On the batteries, is you know, it's
out of bounds?
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Like is it okay?
Speaker 3 (15:49):
So there's like whole teams of engineers just going and
doing calculations and coming back and saying yes, we're good
to go. You know, the winds are a big issue,
so we're launching weather balloons and tracking wind data to
make sure the winds aren't too strong, not at the
ground level but way up in the atmosphere because that's
a huge factor of launch success. There's boats and we
(16:10):
have Coastguard people chasing boats that are in the violation
of the Keypout zone with like you know, we had
like people with AK forty seven's trying to tell them
like hey, you're you know, illegally in the zone, Like
you got to get out of there. We had a
Navy plane takeoff from an aircraft carrier in the middle
of you know, almost the launch windows. It's counting down,
(16:32):
so it's kind of controlled, very very controlled, but very
intense because all of these things are popping up, even
at the point of you know, getting down.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
To just a few minutes to the to the launch countdown.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
And just to be clear, this is purely a test flight, right,
there's no commercial payload on it. There's no people on it.
Basically just launch in the run.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Yeah, correct, this one. You know, some companies decide to
have a payload on the first launch.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
We decided not to.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
We ended up flying the first the very first shavings
of a three D printed part that we ever made
seven years ago. The idea behind that was, you know,
all of the failure we had to overcome to get
to this point, like we're launching that story. I had
my Starbucks receipt, you know, every employee got a photo
(17:21):
that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
But yeah, no, Palin, So okay, so it's time, what like,
it's time for the racket to launch.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
So as sixty seconds was counting down, the energy is high.
Now we had It's very normal for a rocket launch.
At first, we had two other attempts that happened in daylight.
They got very very close to launching. Actually one of
them even ignited all the nine engines and then aborted.
So at the time that you're several minutes close to
the flight, it's really one hundred percent automated, and then
(17:51):
once you're under seventy seconds, it literally is automated, so
if anything happens, it just.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Aboords and safes itself. It's all software driven.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
So we had had a few other launch attempts that
just you know, a sensor was off or some temperatures
slightly drifted because a lot of complex things are happening,
and those final stuff twenty seconds, so that's also actually
contributing to the anxiety and the you know, adrenaline is
you actually don't yet know is it definitely going off
or definitely not. Of course, it's counting down, so in
(18:20):
the engines light it holds down for several seconds until
they get up to full thrust. There's a bunch of
health checks, you know, which are all automated on the rocket,
and then there's the final command that sends which has release.
So right when what are called the rocket holdbacks or
hold downs release back. Then the rocket moved up and
(18:42):
I saw ice, you know, start kind of falling off
of it all over the place because it's really cold propellant,
so there's ice all over it. So this ice just
like you know, kind of cheers off of it and
looks like a star dust or something coming off. So
right when that happened, you know, the engines had already
been let. It's like this crazy blue and purple and
orange flame like methane rockets, like really really insane compared
(19:05):
to normal rockets.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
I waited for that moment.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
I absolutely had planned I was going to run outside,
so I had the path already set and kind of
like very very quickly but also careful not to trip
and fall. Went out the door and went around the corner,
and I just remember the feeling of opening the door,
and right when you open it to go outside, it
just nails you in the chest. I mean, rockets, of
(19:30):
course are really intensely powerful. I'd seen engine tests before,
but yeah, you just immediately feel this like fluttering kind
of almost like somebody's pounding your chest a little bit.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
The sound is the sound that ye yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Loud, super loud, and then I turned around the corner,
so I basically heard it before I saw it. Then
turned around the corner, and then you know, just a
hundred or so feet in the air, was just this
rocket flying and there's a crazy bright blue flame that
looks like looking at a star, you know, being launched
to space. I mean, videos really don't do it just
(20:08):
it is. It is so so much brighter and so
much cooler looking in person. And then you just feel
energy in the air, Like the air almost feels dense
and thick, and it sounds like a whip cracking plus
sub base, you know, just at eleven out of ten intensity,
so it feels alive like that. That's what's so cool.
(20:28):
Microphones and video really just don't capture the feeling of
a live launch because it's like, yeah, just very visceral.
And then of course people around me are like screaming
and cheering and crying. You know, we like literally crying
like viscerally and say, oh my god, oh my God.
Like it's like a pretty religiously spiritually kind of intense
(20:50):
experience just because all the hard work and tears go
into it. It was out of our control at that point.
The rocket flies autonomously, nobody can do anything. But we
needed to get past eighty seconds. So that was the
goal of this mission, was to prove the three D
print instructures were actually strong enough to serve vibe and flight.
That was the very unique technology. My personal goal was
(21:14):
to get to space. I think, you know, that was
above the company stated goal, but I did really want
to get to space on the first flight and have
a full first stage you know, successful launch and stage separation.
That was really what I wanted. And so, you know,
I was watching kind of the live stream. I had
my iPhone next to me, but also just watching live
(21:35):
but at least on the YouTube live stream. They were
calling out different milestones and I was looking for that
eighty second mark to really make sure, yes, we did it.
So I remember when we passed eighty seconds. You know,
of course, everybody started screaming and cheering because that was
full mission success by what we were concerned with, and
(21:57):
it was still rumbling, it was still definitely visible. It
was just like a bright blue streak that went across
the sky. But then as we made it to space
and then had stage separation, you know that that was
for me the moment where I really started celebrating and
then what happened? Yeah, So then you know, I was
(22:17):
looking at the live stream, it became clear that the
second stage engine didn't light. It tried to light, so
at first I actually thought it did because there's just
some sputtering of flames, but they went out, so it
was clear that that second stage didn't light. We weren't
going to make it all the way to orbit. So
then I went back inside. You know, of course at
(22:39):
that point, the team's mood is much more serious, like
we're in data collection mode, you know, we're working with
the FAA mode to safe everything. Everything there was good.
Then I went down into the basement so kind of
took over where the live stream recording was, and then
just addressed the overall team.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
And what happens to the rocket when the second stage, Like,
does it blow itself up? Does it fall into the sea?
What happened?
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Yeah, it actually just goes and falls in Atlantic Ocean,
So it's way out in the middle of the ocean
at that point, and then we use satellites later to
determine that it, you know, did actually sink. You know,
at that point, it's more than ten thousand feet at
the bottom of the ocean, so you know, we kind
of do all the proper steps to make sure that
(23:27):
things are taken care of from a safety perspective.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
And so you were saying you went and talked to
the company.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah, it was ta talk to the company, address everybody,
and then from that moment after, I felt like then
I was kind of off the hook, you know. So
it's definitely very I was very on up until that point,
and then at that point I could stop and then
just start to let you know what happened sink in.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
We'll be back in a minute to discuss the rocket
that Tim and his colleagues are working on now. Also Mars.
After that test launch, Tim and his colleagues talk to
their customers and potential customers basically companies that want to
(24:19):
launch satellites, and based on those conversations, they decided to
develop a much bigger rocket. The one they're working on
now is two hundred and seventy feet tall, which is
about as tall as a twenty five story building and
more than twice as tall as the rocket they launched
last year.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
So what we're doing for the next three years is
building and testing a ton of hardware so we're constantly
almost every week doing engine testing, collecting data, using that
data to then three D print new versions which slightly
tweak the design. This is really the big competitive advantage
of printing, as you're able to iterate the design very quickly.
(24:57):
So this is really the kind of core principle of
development is doing that first at very small component levels
and then building up more and more into a full
end and then a full rocket stage which would have
thirteen engines on it. We'll actually touch that on the
ground before flying, and then so at the time of flights,
(25:20):
by the time you actually fly the rocket in twenty
twenty six, almost every component on the rocket has already
gone through several flight like environments for a full duration.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
And yet like if history is a guide, it still
probably won't work, right, Like that's how hard it is.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Yeah, reaching orbit on a very first rocket is difficult.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Like, it would be very reasonable for you to do
all this work for three years and for it not
to work the first time, because that's the way it works.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yeah, that wouldn't be a total you know, like Company Ender,
for example, we would plan for that. The chrick is
how do you make a rocket be successful and not
have a government's budget to subsidize it. I mean, so
NASA is successful on first launches all the time. You know,
the Europeans are national security launch vehicles.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Because they spend way more than a private company would
ever spend, correct, because they really don't want it to face.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
So the trick is how do you get a low
cost rocket which is highly reliable to be successful.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
So it's an interesting like optimization problem at some level
of like basically when do you launch, Like, you don't
want to launch too late, weirdly, right, you don't want
to be too sure it's work because that's probably too expensive.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Correct, you have to have a macro view of you know,
the overall company. And ultimately, I think this is a
pretty interesting lesson learned just in the industry on iteration.
So if you look at you know, SpaceX's reliability record
for example, is extraordinarily good. But how you get there
is a different solution. So traditional aerospace, like you mentioned,
(26:58):
needs to get it perfect on the first try.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
So NASA everybody does.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And that's sort of for like governmental political reasons, right,
Like they have a sort of different constituency than a
private company. They're not optimizing for the kind of exactly well,
they're not so cost constrained.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Yeah, that's all true, and optics, you're definitely right, they
have a different incentive structure. But what's interesting is if
you take an approach that we're doing and other commercial
companies do, where you build and test a lot of
hardware on the ground before you actually do the flight,
and then you practice a lot that actually creates a
very robust product.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
So there is.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
A kind of study that I refer to a lot
internally where a professor divided an art class into two
groups that he gave him an hour to make clay pots.
One group he said, make as many claypots as he
possibly can in an hour. The next group he said,
make a perfect clay pot, and so one he said
(27:55):
make as many one was a kind of bid for quality.
But then at the end of it, what he didn't
tell them is he was just going to judge both
groups based on quality. So what was interesting is the
group that made as many as possible, actually, we're almost
always considered higher quality, even though he literally didn't tell
them to make something that looked good.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Reps. Reps are underrated, reps are underrated. Tell me about Mars.
Started out talking about Mars as like the big dream.
Tell me more about your dream for Relativity Space and Mars.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Well, I really want Relativity to be the company that
builds an industrial base on Mars.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Meaning like factories to build stuff on Mars as opposed
to rockets to go to.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Mars exactation too.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
So I thought, well, somebody's got to build the factory.
It has to be small, lightweight, be able to build
a wide range of products with very little human labor
because people on Mars won't be quite abundant, and so
all of those North Star parameters. To find an intelligent
three D printing system. So that was where I got
to this idea that three D printing has to be
(29:03):
a part of building infrastructure on Mars. If it's going
to be a self sustaining city andation.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
What's whatever the first thing a factory like that would make.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Yeah, So I think it's going to start with things
like spare parts and things that potentially break on rockets.
So I imagine most early missions will actually launch some form
of three D printing system really just as a way
to make the mission more robust in case something went wrong,
Because when you're that far away, you know, you are
(29:36):
like nine months away from really getting any extra supplies.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
And is the advantage of three D printing there that like,
ideally you can basically have one three D printer that
can make a very wide range of parts as opposed
to traditional manufacturing where kind of you need one machine
to make one part and it can't make any other
part yep, more or less yep exactly.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
So you can pre you don't need as much pre planning,
and there's a lot more flexibility for what you can build.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
So it's a rocket spare parts factory. Yeah, it's basically
the first I.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Think that's the very first thing that's likely. And we
actually have a relativity a mission that we have a
partnership with the co founder and former CTO of SpaceX,
this guy Tom Mueller. He started his own company. We're
actually planning to launch payload to Mars with with his companies.
We have multiple launch windows through twenty twenty nine to
(30:30):
be able to do it with them.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
And that wait, just to be clear, you're providing the
rocket and he's providing the payload.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Yes, we're providing the rocket, he's providing the Mars transfer vehicle.
The reentry vehicle and the lander. But I do think,
you know, we haven't announced what the payload to will
officially be yet. I personally think it would be very
cool to send some sort of three D printer.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
I think that's probably expected.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
But why that's cool is that would actually be the
first object ever manufactured by a human being off planet.
And I do think that just starting to show we
can build things is a really big part of taking
first step, so to speak, towards one day having a
robust civilization.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
We'll be back in a minute with the Lightning round. Okay,
last thing to do is the Lightning Round, which is
just a bunch of fast questions. So in high school,
(31:38):
I've heard you say that you wanted to be a
writer and that you actually wrote a couple of novels.
So I'm curious, what's your favorite novel?
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Yeah, I think so. The novel that brought me to
Los Angeles is a book by Brady ston ellis called
Less than Zero No Relation to My.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Amazing that that made you want to go to law sex.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
I know it is actually amazing.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
What's one thing you think everybody should know about how
rockets work?
Speaker 2 (32:04):
You know? Okay, this is an interesting one.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
So I think there's a lot of focus on the
rocket in you know, the tube, the structure you can see.
I think what actually makes rockets hard is actually a
lot of the ancillary systems, so pressure. You know, rockets
need to be pressurized, they need to be filled, drained
safe successfully. There's different systems you need to start them
up to shut them down. It is the kind of
(32:29):
details and the non sexy systems that are you know,
firing fire that actually get a lot of conversation time
internally because that's what can make a good rocket versus
one that doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
What's the over under on what year you think you'll
go to space?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
What your I go to space? I think I hope.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
I hope by twenty thirty. I think that would be
pretty pretty soon.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yeah, it's pretty soon.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
That's going seven years. Yeah, it depends on suborbital versus orbital. Yeah,
I think in the next seven years going suborbitally would
be would be possible, definitely.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
You think it will get cheaper or you think you'll
be able to do it because you own a rocket company.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
I think it will get cheaper.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
I certainly hope it'll get cheaper because I know how
much it is now, and it's a it's not the
advertised price.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
It's expensive.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Was it scary to leave Jeff Bezos Rocket Company, to
leave Blue Origin in order to create a new company
that would then compete against Jeff Bezos Rocket Company?
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Well competing it's Jeff is you know, he's a He's
a capable guy. I think Elon maybe more crazy, more
irrational from a competitive standpoint, But now I was inspired.
I think at the time I was twenty five, my
co founder was twenty two. I felt we had very
little to lose by trying. I think in hindsight, I
(33:57):
realized just how young, spunky, kind of naive.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Maybe we worry about the challenges.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
I can definitely tell you it's been way harder than
I ever expected to get to this point.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Maybe necessarily naive, maybe usefully naive.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Oh, definitely an usefully naive. I think that was a
big benefit.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
What's one thing that would surprise me about Jeff Bezos.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
I think Jeff.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Really when Yeah, he is actually really patient. So whether
it was you know, when his vision of Blue Origin
with people living and working in space and industrializing kind
of orbid offer.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
I thought that was the vision, and that.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
He was willing to do it in a way where
even if he doesn't see it in his lifetime, he
doesn't care. That he doesn't care to a degree that
just felt very unusual to me.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Interesting. I mean, you don't think of Jeff Bezos and think, oh, yeah,
that that guy is super patient.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Yeah exactly, but but no, he really is, Yeah, he
really is.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
What do you think? What do you think of the
chances you'll go to Mars before you die?
Speaker 3 (35:12):
I have this vision of myself being very old and
sitting in kind of a beach chair with a beer
under some sort of biodome on Mars, and that being
you know where I kick it during the retirement I guess, kind.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Of like Arizona, but farther.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Yeah, but you know, under a big glass dome exactly
that kind of thing. So, you know, I do have
this vision of being there, but I would go towards
the end of my life. I think it'd be a
cool I mean, could you imagine a crazier end cap
to to your whole life by just being on Mars,
especially since that's something I'm dedicating my life to make
(35:55):
happen now with relativity, I think that'd be you know,
pretty pretty cool ending.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Tim Ellis is the co founder and CEO of Relativity Space.
Today's show was produced by Edith Russlo and Gabriel Hunter Chang.
It was edited by Lydia Jean Kott and engineered by
Sarah Bruguer. You can email us at problem at pushkin
dot fm, and please do email us. I try and
read all the emails. I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be
(36:26):
back next week with another episode of What's Your Problem.
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