Main Engine Cut Off

Relativity announced that they have signed a Right of Entry Agreement with the Air Force to develop a launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base, where they could fly missions to polar, Sun-synchronous, and other high-inclination orbits. That’s really important for Relativity’s business model, because combined with their launch site at Cape Canaveral—Launch Complex 16—they could sell missions to any orbit desired.

The agreement isn’t a “Come on in and build!” agreement, though. They still have to complete environmental assessments and a ton of other paperwork. In California, and within Vandenberg Air Force Base specifically, that could drag on forever and potentially be fatal to the plans. That’s made worse by the fact that the area they have access to—south of both SLC-6 (Delta IV Heavy) and SLC-8 (Minotaur)—has been a really tough spot to build on in the past.

I was wrong on my bet that Relativity would get SLC-3W. I’m running out of names to take over SLC-3W, but it is really close to SLC-3E where Atlas V and soon Vulcan fly from, so that might make it a tough spot for anyone to settle in.

The dearth of launch sites at Vandenberg could be a major area of focus of the upcoming Phase 2 awards for the National Security Space Launch program. Blue Origin’s New Glenn and Northrop Grumman’s OmegA would need a launch site if chosen, so that will be something to watch.

In other good news for Relativity, they also announced that they’ve signed Iridium to a multi-launch contract to put up Iridium’s spare satellites between 2023 and 2030. Iridium has 6 spare satellites that they kept on the ground to hedge against any issues that might have cropped up during their launch campaign with SpaceX.

Everything went perfectly with that campaign, though, so Iridium wants each of the 6 spare satellites to be put into a different plane of their constellation. Relativity’s Terran 1 turns out to be a perfect size and price for that job.

Relativity now has a hell of a backlog, plenty of facilities, and the holy grail that is both an east and west coast launch site, if they can successfully build one at Vandenberg.

I honestly wouldn’t bet on the latter, but not because of Relativity’s ability to execute.