Built different (3/24/23)

Happy Friday. The final round of Mars Madness is upon us. Mars Pathfinder eked out a win over Vikings 1 & 2 with 53.3% of the vote, and Mars 2020 handily defeated the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter with 88.3% of all votes. Now, it's time to crown a champion.

In today's edition...🖨️ Rosotics debuts Mantis🌠 Starlink V2 issue💫 Payload's picks

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here. 

Meet Mantis, A New Kind of 3D Printer

Rosotics is on a mission to revolutionize additive manufacturing.

This morning in Mesa, AZ, the 3D-printing startup will debut the first completed prototype of its Mantis printer—a huge, unfolding contraption capable of printing 45 kg of material per hour on the power from a standard 240V outlet. The first printers are marked for delivery in October this year, with a sticker price of $95,000 a pop.

The story so far

Rosotics raised a $750,000 pre-seed led by Draper Associates back in November 2022. Since then, the team has been laser-focused on developing the first prototype of Mantis. 

• The 3D printer is built to manufacture large-format components up to 30 feet in diameter.

• Mantis prints in aerospace-grade steel and aluminum.

• Eventually, Rosotics aims to increase the types of feedstock that can be used in Mantis and broaden sales to other industries, including energy and maritime applications.

And there’s little doubt of the merits of 3D printing in aerospace. On Wednesday, Relativity launched the first 3D-printed rocket, passing Max-Q on the first attempt and proving its thesis about the durability of additively manufactured structures. 

“That's a testament to the robustness of 3D printing, and what you can produce, and how strong those parts can be,” Christian LaRosa, founder and CEO of Rosotics, told Payload.

Rapidly inducting

Traditional 3D printers use a laser to heat and melt feedstock material to build structures. According to LaRosa, they generally print from one nozzle, consume loads of energy, and can be dangerous to operate because of the laser. 

Rosotics’ solution is a new method called rapid induction. Instead of heating the feedstock with an outside source, the technique uses induction to generate heat from within the feedstock, creating a liquid flow for printing. This method consumes less energy than today’s techniques.

“Having a new process that is more efficient [and] does away with the laser entirely allows you to not only push more mass through that nozzle, but you can also run more nozzles at the same time,” said LaRosa.

The induction problem: Rosotics cracked induction for ferromagnetic materials like iron alloys, including steel, early on. Using inductive printing on non-ferromagnetic materials, like aluminum, posed a bit more difficulty. 

To solve the second issue, Rosotics designed a printing nozzle using a blend of materials, including cobalt, that enables the machines to print with aluminum, using the same power and output metrics as they’ve reached for steel, LaRosa said.

Now what? Now that Rosotics has officially debuted Mantis, the startup has a whole lot of deal-making and line production ahead of it.

On the customer side, LaRosa said that Rosotics has begun conversations and conducted site visits with aerospace companies as well as industrial firms in adjacent fields. The startup has been holding off on closing any deals until debuting Mantis, but now they’re open for business.

To ramp up production, Rosotics is establishing an assembly line at the Falcon Field airport in Mesa. LaRosa intends to scale production to “dozens of these machines each quarter” in fairly short order.

Starlink V2 is Falling

Starlink’s V2 satellites are having some issues. On Tuesday, Elon tweeted an explanation for observations that some of the V2 Minis launched last month have changed the altitude and eccentricity of their orbits:

The new technologies: The Starlink V2 Minis are essentially trial runs for technology that will fly on the much larger final V2 fleet of satellites. They come equipped with updated phased array antennas that provide about four times as much capacity per satellite as the first version of Starlink, as well as shiny new argon-powered electric thrusters. 

Musk didn’t specify which new tech on the V2 minis is failing.

Pausing launches: SpaceX had two additional V2 launches scheduled this month. Now, though, the company will pivot to launching more V1.5 satellites on those Falcon 9 flights while it works through the issues with V2.

Sponsored

Lifting Humankind to New Heights

NASA's Space Launch System is the world’s most powerful heavy-lift rocket. 

The SLS, including the Boeing-built core stage, is designed to send humanity back to the Moon, on to Mars and into the unexplored.

Learn more about how NASA’s Space Launch System is paving the way for humanity to go farther than it has ever gone before.

In Other News

• Rocket Lab ($RKLB) is recovering the Electron that launched two BlackSky ($BKSY) satellites a couple hours ago. On that mission, The Beat Goes On, Rocket Lab also set a new turnaround record.

• Starliner's crew flight test has been delayed until after Ax-2 launches to the ISS. 

• Starlink expanded to Haiti. 

• Isar completed 124 hotfire tests of its Aquila engine last year.  

• NRO will fly a classified payload on Delta 4-Heavy’s second-to-last flight. 

• NASA completed Artemis II core stage structure assembly.

The View from SLC-16

💠💠💠 Methalox fuel + a night-time launch is the collab we never know we needed.💠💠💠