Another Silicon Valley investor is getting into the rocket business.
Former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has taken a controlling interest in the Long Beach, California-based Relativity Space. The New York Times first reported the change becoming official, after Schmidt told employees in an all-hands meeting on Monday.
Schmidt’s involvement with Relativity has been quietly discussed among space industry insiders for a few months. Multiple sources told Ars that he has largely been bankrolling the company since the end of October, when the company’s previous fundraising dried up.
It is not immediately clear why Schmidt is taking a hands-on approach at Relativity. However, it is one of the few US-based companies with a credible path toward developing a medium-lift rocket that could potentially challenge the dominance of SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket. If the Terran R booster becomes commercially successful, it could play a big role in launching megaconstellations.
Schmidt’s ascension also means that Tim Ellis, the company’s co-founder, chief executive, and almost sole public persona for nearly a decade, is now out of a leadership position.
“Today marks a powerful new chapter as Eric Schmidt becomes Relativity’s CEO, while also providing substantial financial backing,” Ellis wrote on the social media site X. “I know there’s no one more tenacious or passionate to propel this dream forward. We have been working together to ensure a smooth transition, and I’ll proudly continue to support the team as Co-founder and Board member.”
Terran R’s road to launch
On Monday, Relativity also released a nearly 45-minute video that outlines the development of the Terran R rocket to date and the lengths it must go to reach the launch pad. Tellingly, Ellis appears only briefly in the video, which features several other senior officials who presumably will remain with the company, including Chief Operating Officer Zach Dunn.
“There’s no doubt about it, we have a long way to go,” Dunn says in the video. “But I do believe we have all the foundational elements necessary to succeed. We have an outstanding, dedicated team. We have solid financial footing. We have flight hardware that’s coming together. Flight software that’s coming together. We have the infrastructure necessary to build the first, and then many more rockets.”
Critically, Schmidt will bring financial stability to a company that appears to have struggled to raise the level of funding it did before the launch of its Terran 1 rocket in early 2023. Before then, Relativity stood out in the launch industry for seeking to 3D-print most of each rocket. The first Terran 1 reached space as a majority-printed vehicle, but failed to reach orbit after a second stage issue.
After this largely successful launch, Ellis announced that the company was pivoting to the much larger Terran R vehicle, which is advertised as being capable of launching 33.5 metric tons to low-Earth orbit in expendable mode, and 23.5 tons with a reusable first stage. However, in doing so Relativity lost some of its mystique among investors, because the larger rocket would move away from 3D printing.
The company’s chief technology officer, Kevin Wu, explains this decision in the video.
“We reviewed that decision for the Terran R program, and coming out of that trade we felt that for the Terran R program right now, and right today, friction stir welded aluminum alloy tanks are the best choice for us right now,” Wu said. “At Relativity Space we’re not afraid of changing and pivoting where we need to.”
Explaining their decisions to outsource
The new video is notable because the company has been mostly silent for the last six months. The radio silence began after Ars reported that not only was the Terran R likely to be manufactured more traditionally, but that the company was sourcing key elements of the booster—including its payload fairing and pressure domes—from European suppliers.
Wu explains in the video that printing the domes was “more challenging” than initially believed. As for the payload fairing, company officials said it became a decision as to whether to pursue printing technology, or build a rocket that could reach the launch pad as quickly as possible. So they opted to outsource key components of the rocket.
“I think we’re seeing some tension on how we would optimize Terran R from an engineering perspective, from a technology perspective, and how we would optimize it from a business perspective,” Zack Rubin, senior vice president of manufacturing & supply chain, says in the video. “It’s not uncommon that a company such as ourselves needs to strike a balance between those things.”
The company will build the first “flight” version of the Terran R rocket this year, according to the video. It will eventually launch from a pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, possibly sometime in 2026. The company aims to soft land the first stage of the first launch in the Atlantic Ocean. However, the “Block 1” version of the rocket will not fly again.
Full reuse of the first stage will be delayed to future upgrades. Eventually, the Relativity officials said, they intend to reach a flight rate of 50 to 100 rockets a year with the Terran R when the vehicle is fully developed.