Tim Ellis is an American aerospace 🏷️#engineer and 🏷️#entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of Relativity Space, the Long Beach–based launch company building autonomous additive-manufacturing factories and the Terran R medium-to-heavy-lift rocket. He co-founded Relativity through Y Combinator's Summer 2015 batch after working as a propulsion engineer at Blue Origin focused on metal 3D-printing.
Relativity's signature approach is to print rather than machine the bulk of a rocket airframe — printing structures, tanks, and engines via the company's vertically integrated Stargate factory printers — with the ambition of compressing rocket lead times and parts count. The company first flew a demonstration vehicle, Terran 1, in March 2023, and is now focused on bringing Terran R to first launch. Ellis has been named to multiple 30 Under 30 lists (Inc., Forbes, Business Insider) and was appointed to the National Space Council's Users' Advisory Group as the youngest member by nearly two decades; Relativity's investor list includes Playground Global, Social Capital, Y Combinator, Mark Cuban, and university funds at USC and Stanford.
Tim and I met at Skyspace "Cloud City" II — both of us there at 📝Alex Silkin's invitation — with a 📝Table Talk feeling imminent.