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Relativity Space’s first 3D-printed rocket goes vertical for launch debut
Relativity Space’s first 3D-printed Terran 1 rocket has rolled out to the startup’s Florida pad and been raised vertical ahead of its launch debut.
Founded in 2015, the private Los Angeles-based spaceflight company shipped its first complete rocket prototype to Florida in June 2022. Prior to that major milestone, Relativity qualified Terran 1’s orbital second stage at leased facilities located at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in southwest Mississippi, and – alongside a nosecone and interstage – arrived at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) more or less ready to fly.
The last six months have been almost exclusively dedicated to testing Terran 1’s larger and more powerful first stage (booster) as thoroughly as possible. Instead of building a dedicated booster test stand in Mississippi, Relativity chose to modify Terran 1’s lone LC-16 launch pad for the crucial task. Ultimately, the startup was able to complete a large amount of booster testing on the ground, significantly increasing the odds that Terran 1 will perform as expected when it lifts off for the first time.
The update that's rolling out to the fleet makes full use of the front and rear steering travel to minimize turning circle. In this case a reduction of 1.6 feet just over the air— Wes (@wmorrill3) April 16, 2024
Beginning with cryogenic proofing, propellant loading, ‘spin starts,’ and several shorter static fire tests, Relativity’s first Terran 1 booster test campaign culminated with two long-duration static fires in September 2022. The final 57 and 82-second static fires weren’t quite the “full mission duration” tests Relativity had hoped for, but the company concluded that the data gathered was enough to clear the booster for flight.
According to Ellis, one of the most important insights gained from those tests was into Terran 1’s uncharacteristically complex autogenous pressurization system – unprecedented for such a small rocket. Generally speaking, orbital-class rockets store helium gas in small ultra-high-pressure tanks (COPVs) and use helium to pressurize their propellant tanks as they are drained of propellant. Autogenous pressurization refers to an alternative in which a portion of a rocket’s liquid oxidizer and fuel are turned into hot gas and injected back into their respective tanks to pressurize them.
Helium is extremely expensive and an unrenewable resource. In theory, autogenous pressurization – at the cost of being significantly more complex and finicky – can also reduce the amount of dry mass reserved for tank pressurization. While Terran 1 wasn’t able to complete a full-duration static fire, the tests it did complete showed Relativity that its autogenous pressurization systems are unlikely to be a problem in flight, mostly eliminating a major source of uncertainty.
Following the final 82 or 88-second static fire, Relativity returned Terran 1’s booster to LC-16’s hangar and shifted its focus to fully assembling the two-stage rocket and finishing the launch pad. In early December, the company announced that it had fully assembled the first Terran 1. Days later, the rocket was installed on the pad’s “Transporter Erector.” The T/E responsible for transporting the rocket and raising it vertical, but it also needs to connect the rocket to ground systems (propellant, power, comms, etc.) and hold it down before liftoff.
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On or around December 6th, Terran 1 rolled out to the pad and was raised vertical soon after. According to Ellis, all that stands between Terran 1 and its first launch is a short integrated static fire test and a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It’s impossible to say how long the FAA will take, but it’s likely that Relativity will be technically ready to launch just a handful of weeks from now.
Beyond building a relativity impressive rocket, Relativity’s claim to fame is large-scale 3D printing. The startup says that the first Terran 1 rocket – booster, upper stage, fairing, engines, and all – is 85% 3D-printed by mass and the largest single 3D-printed object ever built. Terran 1 reportedly weighs around 9.3 tons (20,500 lb) empty; will measure around 33 meters (110 ft) tall and 2.3 meters (7.5 ft) wide; and will produce around 90 tons (~200,000 lbf) of thrust at liftoff. The rocket is designed to launch 1.25 tons (~2750 lb) to low Earth orbit for $12 million
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that flying cars will be coming to the market, something that his own company has hinted at previously.
Musk said on X, in response to a post that read, “We were promised flying cars and all we got is infinite superintelligence for everyone,” “You will get flying cars.”
You will get flying cars
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2026
The post rang back to when Musk teased flying and hovering capabilities for the Tesla Roadster, the company’s supercar that has been delayed more times than anyone cares to count. It was set for an unveiling earlier this year, but it was then pushed back to August. There is still no sign of it coming.
However, that does not mean it won’t. But one of the biggest features of the Roadster that was teased was a SpaceX package that featured cold gas thrusters on the rear end that would help with white-knuckle acceleration. Another set would face the ground and would help the Roadster gain small bits of altitude, potentially helpful to jump over obstacles.
Elon Musk hints at Tesla Roadster’s “hovering” abilities in SpaceX package
But it is not a straightforward thing for Musk. As a serial entrepreneur, he tends to spend his time on major disruptors; currently, his largest projects are artificial intelligence and compute power, as well as SpaceX’s launches that will eventually make life multiplanetary.
In the past, he has been critical of flying cars and has been in favor of tunnels, one of the big reasons he started the Boring Company. In 2017 at a TED talk, he said:
“There is a challenge with flying cars in that they’ll be quite noisy. The wind force generated will be very high. Let’s just say that if something’s flying over your head, if there are a whole bunch of flying cars all over the place, that is not an anxiety-reducing situation…You’re thinking, ‘Did they service their hubcap? Or is it going to come off and guillotine me as they’re flying past?'”
However, he’s never been against them. He has also said he’s in favor of both tunnels and flying cars.
Contrary to press reports, I’m not against flying cars. Just said it was important to consider both pros and cons.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2015
Most recently, Musk said that anyone who wants a flying car should be able to get one. This was stated last October on the Joe Rogan Experience:
“My friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars… I think if Peter wants a flying car, we should be able to buy one.”
Whether the Roadster will be Tesla’s flying car or potentially another one remains in the mind of Musk. Of course, the Roadster will have to make its way to production lines before we find out.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s next trillion dollar bet has nothing to do with rockets, Musk tells staff
Elon Musk told SpaceX staff AI revenue will soon dwarf rockets and Starlink combined entirely.
Elon Musk told SpaceX employees this week that artificial intelligence, not rockets, will soon carry the company’s revenue. In a roughly 29 minute internal address posted on SpaceX’s X account on Tuesday, Musk said AI revenue will pass every other line of business at SpaceX “probably in September” and pull further ahead by the fourth quarter.
The numbers he gave are specific. SpaceX currently runs 1.4 gigawatts of AI compute capacity. Musk wants that at 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027, a jump he tied directly to revenue: “if we bring 10GW of AI online by the end of next year, it will be $300 billion to $500 billion a year in revenue.” He called those “big numbers,” which undersells a projection larger than what most countries produce in a year.
We made rockets reusable and are rebuilding the internet in space. The next challenge: making life multiplanetary and understanding the true nature of the universe
Watch @ElonMusk deliver a company update to @SpaceX employees pic.twitter.com/5c8rxoCQfu
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 11, 2026
Musk went further on where AI fits into SpaceX’s future. “Probably in four or five years, AI will be 99% of the value of SpaceX,” he told staff, adding that digital intelligence would eventually run “a trillion times” ahead of biological intelligence as computing scales. He tied that growth to the company’s founding mission, telling employees “we must win on AI, because the future is overwhelmingly AI and robots,” with the payoff meant to help fund Starship and a Mars program that increasingly runs through Terafab, the joint Tesla, SpaceX and xAI chip plant.
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
None of this is entirely new territory. SpaceX told investors much the same story during its first earnings call as a public company on August 4, where Musk moved the company’s $1 trillion revenue target up a year to 2030 and said Starlink could someday carry a majority of the world’s internet. What the all hands video adds is a hard deadline and a specific power figure Musk had not given publicly before, along with a franker pitch to his own workforce that AI, not launch cadence, is now the thing SpaceX is betting its future on.
The AI revenue itself is not coming from SpaceX training its own models. It is largely Starlink acting as the network layer for xAI’s workloads, plus SpaceX renting out compute capacity directly, the same approach behind the roughly $16 billion the company spent on AI infrastructure in a single quarter.
Musk closed the video with a pitch aimed at recruiting and retention rather than investors, telling employees that anyone who helps SpaceX win the AI race will eventually get the chance to go to the moon or Mars themselves. Whether SpaceX can turn 1.4 gigawatts into 10 in seventeen months is the more immediate question, and one that will show up in quarterly numbers well before anyone leaves Earth.
In a new note to investors on Tuesday, Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco said that Tesla has one big financial question to answer for investors regarding its Robotaxi rollout, Full Self-Driving software, and Optimus.
Percoco said in the note that, for the most part, investors are still very positive about the direction the company is headed. However, there are some things the firm would like to see, and they have to do with financials.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla bulls are more than convinced that the company’s Full Self-Driving software is proof it can develop physical AI. Financially, however, there are still some questions, especially on elevated spending, which CEO Elon Musk said would occur as the company works to roll out Robotaxi faster and continue developing its Optimus robot.
The latter two are where Tesla will have to prove progress to investors, as Percoco writes that both projects “will require clearer evidence that Robotaxi is scaling and more tangible Optimus proof points to support the ROI on elevated capex.”
Percoco said the second quarter earnings call did not change his long-term thesis of where Tesla is positioned in the AI race, which is out in front. However, there are concerns that weaker gross margins and higher R&D spend will stress financials, and that has “sharpened our (and investors’) focus on measurable progress across Robotaxi and Optimus.”
Additionally, Robotaxi still needs to be proven with more operation in existing cities while maintaining safety but improving how many rides it gives in any given time, he said. For Optimus, Percoco wrote that he is “still looking for evidence beyond commentary around SOP.”
Morgan Stanley put Percoco in charge of covering Tesla after long-time analyst Adam Jonas transitioned to the automotive side.
Currently, Morgan Stanley has a $415 price target on Tesla and a ‘Hold’ rating on the stock. It is trading at around $330 at the time of publication, which was 2:30 P.M. on the East Coast.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk says flying cars are coming
SpaceX’s next trillion dollar bet has nothing to do with rockets, Musk tells staff
