That was the old Virgin Orbit facility. There was over a hundred million dollars worth of assets in that building and we managed to buy the whole thing for sixteen million dollars.
This is an Electron. This is the rocket that we fly the most of right now. So, it's flown 93 times, the second most frequently launched rocket in the world behind the Falcon 9. This line right now can produce one engine every eight days. There's over 930 engines that have been to space. We've got two engine test cells and that runs 20 hours a day, seven days a week.
Do you keep a tracking list of all the potentially bankrupt space companies and which facilities you want to buy?
Who's at the top of the list?
I can't comment on that. I can't be saying that. That'll get me in trouble.
All right. So, now we're riding over to the engine propulsion lab.
Engine Development Center, technically, EDC.
Okay. Technically, Engine Development Center. How long did it take you guys to build out this entire facility? And are you going to be buying more buildings here?
Oh, I hate buying real estate. It's my pet peeve because we just see much of it and it's just a cost. Well, this building we kind of stood up fresh. Where we're taking you, EDC, was arguably one of the best deals of my life.
Because that was the old Virgin Orbit facility and there was over a hundred million dollars worth of assets in that building and we managed to buy the whole thing for sixteen million dollars.
Yeah, I know. It was a fantastic contribution from Sir Richard Branson to the space industry.
One Sir to another Sir. Wow. So, what was the process like for flipping that over?
Oh, it happened really, really fast. Like they were in bankruptcy and we saw it sort of come up. We all just actually piled into golf carts like this, hanging off the back, nipped down there, and made it happen.
And you got to take all of the equipment inside?
Oh, yeah. All the machines, everything, yeah. The whole lot.
Oh, yeah. It was great. I mean, we didn't ever have to worry about a factory for building engines ever again. Like, we're totally sorted.
Do you keep a tracking list of all the potentially bankrupt space companies and which facilities you want to buy? Who's at the top of the list?
I can't say that. That'll get me in trouble.
I'm assuming there's going to be more.
Going to be a bunch more.
The funny thing is space companies are really hard to kill. The amount of space companies that should be dead and are not, these sort of zombie companies, is quite incredible. It's not like other industries where when you go to die, you just die. Space companies tend to linger for quite some time.
Don't know. They just seem to...
How do they continually get funding? Do people love space so much?
Yeah, I think there's always enthusiasts. The thing about space is that it's awesome that somebody can be really forward-leaning and promotional, and everyone gets excited. But the downside to space is exactly the same thing, where it's really difficult to understand and comprehend. So people can stand up and make these claims, and it's really, really hard to corroborate unless you go five layers deep into the rocket equation.
Who has been the best at that kind of diligence and research that you found?
Are investors actually good at doing that?
Not really. Not really. Because you see a company that's just objectively terrible, and they just continue to get funding. There's just new investor after new investor after new investor. And sometimes the really big firms that you think are really good at it actually are the worst.
Damn. So we're right next to the airport. Do you fly your helicopter over here?
No, no, no. No, that's purely a New Zealand activity.
All right, we're now going to see the Engine Development Center.
How did you guys structure out this facility? So you have all these different units, what are we going to see?
So there's a whole big machine shop in here. There's probably one of the largest 3D print shops you're going to see. One of the things that we pioneered early on with Electron was our 3D printing of engines. Most of the Rutherford engine is 3D printed and most of the Archimedes engine is 3D printed. So you should see some cool stuff.
How many times do you do this tour? In your typical day, does the Space Force come on this tour?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, but I try and outsource that as much as possible. I'm far more useful for other things.
What are we going to start with?
We're going to go in here. We're going to go in into additive manufacturing.
These are all 3D printers, additive manufacturing. At least by mass, the vast majority of all of our engines are 3D printed, and we have some really unique processes in here as well. So have a look at this one here. That's a thrust chamber for Archimedes. That's actually copper, and then we clad it with a superalloy over the top. We use 3D printing because we're able to incorporate a whole bunch of geometry into one kind of design. We're not stupid; we don't 3D print bolts and all that sort of stuff. But we've really become very good at designing these really complex architectures that, if you can 3D print, you can basically print multiple parts all in one part. At the end of the day, it's all about speed and cost.
An Archimedes engine is an incredibly cheap engine. Same with a Rutherford engine, it's just ridiculously so. Building engines fast, building engines cheap that are high performance. There's probably about 10 people that run this whole shop, so it's all automated.
There's a variety of machines, a variety of materials. We print Inconel superalloys, copper, titanium, basically any material you can imagine, including our own material that we developed specially for the Archimedes engine. So there's a whole lab back there with material scientists developing new materials for that particular engine and environment.
What are the biggest differences, obviously there are some, between Archimedes and Rutherford?
The Rutherford is an electric pump cycle, whereas Archimedes is a staged combustion cycle. Just the scale of the engines—we'll go and have a look at some—are enormously different. It's a much more complicated cycle and a much, much larger engine.
But in saying that, the ethos of how you do it has remained the same. How we do injectors and how we combine multiple parts into an engine all remains the same.
What's your favorite part?
The favorite part of any engine builder is the injector because that's where the magic happens, the black magic happens. Everything else is to contain that mixing and produce thrust, but the injector and the turbopump, those two bits are pretty cool.
We have an engine test facility in Stennis, Mississippi. We've got two engine test cells out there.
Yeah, but I mean, we're spread literally right across the world. No, this feels very close. In Mississippi, we've got two engine test cells and that runs 20 hours a day, 7 days a week. So it's just firing engines all the time. And then down in New Zealand, we have an engine test cell for the Rutherford. We produce one Rutherford engine every day to support that program.
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The machines are getting smaller and then they're getting bigger.
Yeah. Well, there's actually a really, really big machine. It's going to turn up next year, which will be the largest.
Well, it basically can do a whole Archimedes engine in one print.
Which is tall as me, yeah.
These guys make it, the same people, yeah. But we're the first customer of it in the world, yeah. We'll just go and have a look in. I'll just check this one's running first. Yep.
So, what are we looking at here?
This is a laser powder machine, so there's 12 lasers in there. We're basically sintering the metal together to make a part. The technology has been around for quite a while, but the speed and the complexity of the part that we make here is pretty crazy.
They're not cheap machines.
