Relativity Just Revealed A New Terran R Design
Terran 1 recently lifted off and managed to get all the way to second stage ignition before problems arose. While overall the flight was a success, we will never see Terran 1 lift off again. Relativity just recently revealed its future plan and shift toward Terran R, a reusable medium to heavy lift orbital class rocket. This news came in addition to a complete redesign and much more.
A few big changes include the size of the rocket, its payload volume, booster life, Aeon R engine development, and the printing process, just to name a few. All of which came out yesterday with a host of new renders and goals. At the core of this announcement, Relativity is accelerating the company’s focus on Terran R to meet significant and growing market demand.
This all hands on deck approach to the single launch vehicle is intended to improve speed and overall efficiency. In addition to work on the rocket itself, major new infrastructure plans were also released to the public. Here I will go more in-depth into the new Terran R design, everything we know about this rocket, what to expect in the coming months, and more.
New Design
As a two-stage, 270-foot-tall rocket with an 18-foot diameter and a 5-meter payload fairing, Relativity describes Terran R as a customer-centric next generation launch vehicle designed to meet the needs of commercial companies and government entities sending payloads into LEO, MEO, GEO, and beyond. Just looking at the renders provided by the company highlights quite a different design with the upper stage becoming much more simple and streamlined. While this is one of the more obvious differences, its not all.
Terran R will now prioritize first stage reusability, with the capability of launching 23,500kg to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) or 5,500kg to a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO), both with downrange landing, or up to a maximum payload of 33,500kg to LEO in expendable configuration. Horizontal integration to the vehicle will be supported through a standard Payload Attach Fitting (PAF) interface, with payload integration configurations available for clusters of constellation satellites, single large satellites, or other unique spacecraft. As far as when we can expect to see this rocket in action, what was originally a date of 2024 has now shifted a few years. Starting in 2026, Terran R will launch from Space Launch Complex 16, the company’s orbital launch site at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Designed for rapid reusability and development iteration speed, Terran R is a 3D printed rocket, with initial versions using aluminum alloy tank straight-section barrels in a hybrid manufacturing approach, which allows Relativity to meet the rapid launch and ramp rate timelines necessary to serve overwhelming market demand, including servicing Relativity’s signed customer backlog of $1.65B in Launch Service Agreements (LSA’s) and additional several billion dollars in active customer LSA dialogue.
Each Terran R requires approximately 6 times more 3D printing by mass than Terran 1. Relativity also pointed out that initially, Terran R will use the same proprietary printed aluminum alloy as flown on Terran 1 with a focus on supply chain scaling. However, a third-generation aluminum alloy, designed for improved performance of an orbital vehicle mission life beyond 20 reusable flights, is in active development, which is accelerated by the aid of artificial intelligence-based alloy discovery tools.
Focusing on the design, Terran R features two near body-length aero strakes, four unique slider-mechanism landing legs, and four printed actuating grid fins. These features are intended to optimize first stage reusability, enabling rapidly scaled launch cadence for customers together with greater payload to orbit and lower costs versus other reusable architectures. Terran R’s first stage architecture allows for a high angle of attack reentry which reduces propellant required for reentry burns, aerodynamic design for better reentry stability and improved control authority, and a passively actuated landing leg deployment system which is elegantly simple, lightweight, and highly operable for rapid reuse. An 18-foot vehicle diameter also aids vehicle stability with lower requirements on landing legs. Similar to the shape and look of Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket. Terran R will have an electromechanical actuator (EMA)-based engine thrust vector control (TVC) system, and also use EMA’s for grid fin control, in addition to in-house developed avionics and flight software. Additionally, the vehicle features a reentry heat shield on the aft end designed for rapid reusability.
The company intends to design major parts of the vehicle for 20 reuses right away, with strategic development of reusability criteria and rapid learning from flight data to continuously improve through successive vehicle block upgrades. Focusing on our customer’s needs for urgent, disruptive, relevant, and diversified launch supply in the medium-to-heavy payload market, they chose to prioritize optimizing for first stage reuse initially. Each early flight of Terran R will seek to deliver customer payloads to orbit reliably. Then, after vehicle ascent, Max-Q, MECO, stage separation, and second stage ignition – with the customer payload well on its way to orbit – the first stage will begin its entry, landing, and reuse journey.
Engines & Infrastructure
In addition to the rocket’s design, we learned a lot more about the engines powering this launch vehicle. Terran R’s 3D printed Aeon R engines are designed to use liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellants, be highly reusable, and feature a uniquely high-pressure gas generator cycle driving two turbopumps. Designed and manufactured in-house by Relativity, Aeon R engines are produced with significant advancements in additive manufacturing technology, building on the development of the company’s prior engine, Aeon 1. These new 3D printing capabilities enable the scale required for the higher thrust-class Aeon R engine, continuing to drive part count reductions by designing and printing singular ‘nodes of simplicity’, streamlining many engine elements into unified prints. Relativity highlights that this design approach supports lowered costs, lowered engine complexity, greater robustness, rapid iteration, and the speed and scale of production required to serve customers.
Already a focus of significant development and testing efforts for the last two years, Aeon R benefits from the heritage of its smaller predecessor, Aeon 1, which is used onboard Relativity’s Terran 1 rocket. Migrating many of the same propulsion system architecture decisions from Aeon 1 to Aeon R has unlocked a high rate of iterative design and fast-tracked much of the Aeon R test program. Since mid-2022, Relativity has been underway testing all Aeon R combustion devices at NASA Stennis Space Center – including the main Thrust Chamber Assembly (TCA), gas generator (GG), and gas-gas ignition system – at full scale and 100% power with high combustion efficiency. All engine active valves are developed in-house, with all valves produced, successfully actuated, and in development testing. In February 2023, the company completed its first full build of an Aeon R engine, and turbopump testing will begin in the coming months ahead of full engine testing this year.
The other valuable update had to do with the various infrastructure supporting these projects. Terran R’s production homebase will be in Long Beach, CA at Relativity’s one million square foot headquarters which is home to its fourth generation Stargate 3D metal printers. At production run rate from this single factory, the company estimates its ability to initially produce and fly more than 45 Terran R’s annually, with adaptive software-driven production infrastructure able to build more or less first or second stage components based on reuse rate and customer demand over time. Stage and engine testing for Terran R will take place at Relativity’s test facilities, located at NASA Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.
Announced in October 2022, Relativity is actively building out additional new test stands and infrastructure on a more than 150-acre expansion to support a high volume of Terran R testing as vehicle production and launch cadence increases. The completion of a new dual-bay vertical engine test stand is expected by Fall 2023, in addition to the multiple test areas at each of Relativity’s E2 and E4 sites repurposed from Terran 1 development. Leveraging Space Launch Complex 16, Relativity’s current orbital launch site at Space Force Base in Cape Canaveral, FL, the company plans to build a secondary launch pad adjacent to its existing Terran 1 test and launch facilities. After completion of production and initial structural proto-qualification testing in Long Beach, Terran R vehicles will travel by sea through the Panama Canal to Mississippi for testing and then Florida for launch. Reused boosters will stay in Florida and be rapidly refurbished for additional launches. New images reveal the exact plan for this new launchpad expected to support frequent Terran R launches.
Relativity CEO Tim Ellis was quoted saying “Our first chapter as a company was to prove to the world 3D printed rockets were viable. We just did that with Terran 1. Our second chapter is to build the next great launch company with Terran R. Terran 1 was like a concept car, redefining the boundaries of what is possible by developing many valuable brand-new technologies well ahead of their time. Terran R is the mass-market, huge demand product that will be amazing precisely because it brings those ‘concept car’ developments into full maturity.”
Conclusion
Relativity Space just gave us a bunch of new information on Terran R and exactly what they’re working on. With a lot of testing and production in the near future, we can expect a lot more updates from the company and hopefully consistent progress. We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry.