relativity launch date：Relativity Space is moving on from the Terran 1 rocket to ...

There are many changes here, but one of the biggest is moving away from the goal of a fully reusable launch vehicle.

"Im calling it a prioritization of first stage reuse just because the economic benefit is so much greater," Ellis said. "And since we need to get into market, and get to a higher ramp rate as quickly as possible, it just made sense to focus company resources on that. Its a much more pragmatic initial solution."

What all this means

Ellis said there is considerable demand for a larger rocket like this and that the market drove the companys decision to go bigger with the Terran R vehicle. Already, he said, Relativity has signed a customer backlog of $1.65 billion in launch service agreements and has an additional $3.68 billion in customer pipeline. In its news release, Relativity included hopeful comments from constellation operators, including Iridium and OneWeb, about the rockets potential.

What seems clear is that Ellis is ...