Relativity Space has had a wild ride to launch

Relativity Space will be attempting to make history with the first launch of the 110-foot-tall Terran 1 rocket tomorrow afternoon. The company, which was founded in 2015 by Tim Ellis and Jordan Noone, is best-known for its innovative 3D printing technology: Terran 1 is 85% 3D-printed by mass, and that even includes the rocket engines. The company’s made big bets and has even bigger ambitions, with Relativity CEO Tim Ellis echoing SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s Martian ambitions.

“Our long-term mission remains that we want to help build an industrial base on Mars and help make humanity multiplanetary,” Ellis told TechCrunch.

The company’s made a lot of headlines over its eight-year history. Here are the top 10 moments from the TC archives.

We wrote about Relativity for the first time back in 2017, when the company only had 14 (!) full-time employees. We note that the company wants to drive the cost of rocket launches down ten-fold using its 3D-print process.

Relativity landed a multi-year contract from the U.S. Air Force to operate rocket launch facilities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida — the very site from which Relativity hopes to launch Terran 1 tomorrow.

TC’s Darrell Etherington spoke to CEO Tim Ellis about the economics behind Relativity Space, just a few months after the company raised $140 million. (TC+)

Riding high on momentum, Relativity announced its new digs: a massive warehouse-style building in Long Beach, California.

The company announced the massive raise in November 2020, which was shortly followed by an aggressive expansion in workforce, facilities and, well…everything.

Relativity finally revealed what comes after Terran 1: Terran R, a much larger and even more ambitious 3D-printed rocket — with full reusability.

Less than a year after closing on $500 million, the company managed to raise another $650 million to scale the development of Terran R.

Relativity boosted its footprint by a factor of 10 with a new 1 million-square-foot facility in Long Beach.

We broke news last year that Relativity inked a huge deal with British satellite constellation operator OneWeb, plus that it had $1.2 billion in firm Terran R launch contracts — contracts that the company managed to land before sending even a single rocket to orbit.

Relativity announced new plans with startup Impulse Space, founded by SpaceX’s former CTO of propulsion, to land a spacecraft on Mars as early as 2024 (yes, you read that right).