A $550 Epson ful HD home cinema projector, a $33 Kyoku paring knife, and a Mario Party Switch bundle at Kohls head up Friday’s deals of the day. TGIF indeed.
Despite its utterly awful image quality (maxing out at a resolution of just 160×144 pixels), the Game Boy Camera was still a popular add-on, thanks in part to a cheap accessory that could print out tiny photos. But finding paper stock for the Game Boy Printer is no easy task these days, so Vaclav Mach created a $20…
Building a rocket is a big operation, even when you’re printing them from the ground up, like Relativity Space . The launch startup is graduating from its initial office, which is a bit cramped for assembling rockets, to a huge space in Long Beach where the company will go from prototype to first flight.
We recently visited Relativity at their old headquarters, which had the scrappy (literally — there were metal scraps everywhere) industrial feel you’d expect from a large-scale hardware startup. But except for the parking lot, there didn’t seem to be anywhere to put together… you know, a rocket.
So it was no surprise when co-founder and CEO Tim Ellis said that the company was just starting the process of moving to a gigantic new open-plan warehouse-style building in Long Beach.
Relativity CEO Tim Ellis is obviously excited about the new HQ.
“It’s a big step,” Ellis told TechCrunch. ” It’ll actually be the first factory we fully build out with 3D printers. This new space is actually big enough that we’ll be printing the first and second stages, and the fairing at the same time. The new ceiling height is approximately 40 feet, which will allow us to build taller – about twice the height of our current facility. We’re on track to start shipping parts to Stennis for testing later this year.”
In addition to the three “Stargate” printers that can print parts up to 15 feet high, they’ll have three more that can go up to 20 feet and two that can go up to 30. It’s a bit hard to imagine a single printed rocket part 30 feet tall until you’ve seen some of the pieces Relativity has already made.
Not only do the rockets take up a lot of space, but the company itself is growing.
“From two years ago to now we’ve over 20X-ed our entire footprint as a company,” Ellis pointed out. In other words, it was starting to feel a bit overpopulated in their old spot near LAX.
This the space as it is now; the image up top is a render of how it will look once active.
Assembly of the launch vehicle, called Terran 1, its Aeon engines, and R&D will all take place in the new HQ. It’s nearly 120,000 square feet, and will be built as a very high-tech manufacturing operation indeed. There will be no fixed tooling, meaning the factory can be rapidly reconfigured, and will be highly automated. The company’s 3D printers aren’t like the simple ones used for rough prototyping but enormous, carefully monitored robot arms that perform real-time analysis of the metal they are laying down.
“It’s really the first autonomous factory, and it’s not just for rockets,” Ellis said. “Once we prove out the factory with this first launch vehicle, we’re convinced this works towards our long term plan of launching factories to Mars and building a wide range of products that you’re going to need there. It’s on the path for the long term vision but also a way for us to be a pioneer in this new value chain for aerospace.”
“It’s going to be cool,” he added.
A new study from the University of Otago has found a link between activity in the brain of bees and humans. The team found that the alpha oscillations in bees have similar properties to the human brain. Alpha oscillations are associated with brain functions like attention, memory, and consciousness. Researchers believe that bee brains could provide new avenues to understand … Continue reading
You have until March 6th to try and nab a working Nintendo PlayStation prototype — one of the rarest relics of lost gaming history — and it’ll only cost you a few hundred thousand dollars. The current high bid for this retro prototype at auctio…
Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution (Nintendo Switch) | $24 | Amazon | Clip the coupon on the page
There’s nothing wrong with the new, rebooted Motorola Moto 360. There’s just nothing special about it either.
The amazing canine nose is more impressive than we thought, demonstrating the ability to detect weak infrared radiation from a distance, according to new research.
It seems that this year a lot of major events could be in trouble due to the coronavirus outbreak. For example, Sony pulled out of PAX East, MWC 2020 was cancelled, and more recently, an Olympics official has hinted that there is a chance that the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games could potentially be cancelled if things do not improve.
Now it looks like we have our next casualty where Facebook has announced that they will be cancelling its F8 conference. Just like most tech companies, Facebook typically hosts an annual event where they announce new products, services, and offer updates on what they are doing and what they have planned.
According to Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Facebook’s director of platform partnerships, “We explored other ways to keep the in-person part of F8, but it’s important to us to host an inclusive event and it didn’t feel right to have F8 without our international developers in attendance.” Facebook will now instead host a series of local events with live-streamed content.
That being said, Facebook’s cancellation of their F8 conference is now bringing into question as to the fate of other tech company events. Both Google and Apple have conferences set for the middle of the year as per tradition, so it is unclear if those will be going ahead now.
Facebook Cancels Its F8 Conference Over Coronavirus Concerns
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