[music playing]
CARL AZUZ: But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the Friday and it is awesome.
I'm Carl Azuz.
Welcome to our last show of the week.
In several places along the border between the United
States and Canada, convoys of large trucks,
tankers, and farm equipment have blocked the passage.
These are demonstrations that started two weeks ago in
the Canadian capital of Ottawa.
Initially, truck drivers were protesting a new rule in Canada
that required them to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19
in order to cross the border.
If they're not vaccinated, they have
to spend two weeks in quarantine before they
can drive-through the country.
The demonstrators called their protests the freedom convoy.
And while Canada says almost 90% of its truckers
are fully vaccinated and eligible to cross the border,
more groups have joined the protests, speaking out
against other COVID restrictions like mask
mandates, lockdowns, and limits on how many people
can get together.
The impact this is having isn't just on border traffic.
Car companies, including Ford, General Motors, and Toyota
say they've had to decrease production or temporarily close
plants because they're not able to get the supplies
they need to make as many cars.
Though some public monuments have reportedly been defaced,
the protests have been largely peaceful.
But Canadian government officials
say they haven't been lawful.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the demonstrators quote,
"don't have the right to blockade
our economy, or our democracy, or our fellow citizens'
daily lives."
A protester interviewed by CNN said
he lost his job because he didn't take a COVID vaccine,
and that it's not right for companies
to be able to take away people's livelihoods over that.
The blockade that started in Ottawa
has spread to other border crossings
between Canada and the US.
Similar freedom convoy events have been reported
in Australia and New Zealand.
And this week, American government officials
said they've seen indications that convoys are being
organized in the US, also in opposition
to vaccine mandates for truck drivers and other restrictions.
US officials say demonstrations could impact the Super
Bowl on Sunday or President Joe Biden's State
of the Union speech on March 1.
Authorities say they haven't seen calls for violence
with these demonstrations.
They're expected to be peaceful.
But officials are working with law enforcement
to make sure communities are protected.
10 second trivia.
The first rocket to reach space was
made in what country, Soviet Union, United
States, Germany, or China?
[music playing]
In the early 1940s, a German V2 rocket became the first manmade
object to reach space.
In 2016, a company was founded with the goal of producing
rockets, as in [clicks tongue] using giant three
dimensional printers.
Over the past six years, the company
has raised a fortune from investors, $650 million
as of last summer according to CNBC.
But one big question is, will these things fly?
No one knows yet.
The organization has delayed its maiden launch
date several times.
It's blamed COVID, changes to its flagship rocket's design,
changes to its engine and materials.
One day, its founders hope to build
a production facility on Mars.
But first, they've got to get their rockets off the Earth.
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- What you're watching is a rocket being
sculpted by a giant 3D printer.
TIM ELLIS: This really is creating the Star Trek
replicator sci-fi future that we have seen
in movies for many decades.
But no one has tried to build at this scale yet.
But we're doing it.
- Tim Ellis is the co-founder and CEO of Relativity Space.
Ellis believes his team has found a way
to make cheaper and more reliable
rockets using their 3D printers they've named Stargate.
- And what are the advantages of 3D printing a rocket?
TIM ELLIS: Yeah, so the advantages
really are around automation and part count reduction.
So usually, and really for the last 60 years,
you still walked into any aerospace factory
around the world, rockets or otherwise,
and they're still building products one at a time
by hand with millions of individual piece parts,
and these giant factories full of fixed tooling.
That takes billions of dollars and years
to set up, and iterate, and change.
And so really, the 3D printing approach we're doing
is the Holy Grail for automation and aerospace.
- And printing rockets means Relativity
can build them much faster.
Ellis says his team can currently print rocket
in about five months, and is working to cut
that build time even further.
Being able to build a rocket in 60 days, 30 days,
is that pace really necessary?
TIM ELLIS: It is.
Because it's about the rate of improvement.
So I think every 60 days, we can build a better
version and a better version.
So it's really about the kind of rate of practice.
Because people learn much faster by doing
rather than just simulating.
- How does your approach impact the cost of the rockets?
Because rockets, as you pointed out,
are incredibly expensive traditionally.
TIM ELLIS: Yeah, so versus other rockets
of a similar payload class built traditionally,
our rocket is about a quarter of the cost.
So other launch vehicles currently flying.
- This is Terran 1 here.
TIM ELLIS: Yep.
- This is your baby.
TIM ELLIS: Yeah, this is the baby.
So yeah, this is Terran 1.
So it's the world's first entirely 3D
printed rocket fuselage.
- The company says Terran 1 will launch in 2022.
If all goes well, it will be the first of many launch vehicles
Ellis and his team will print in their Long Beach,
California factory.
In fact, Relativity is already hard at work
on their larger reusable heavy lift rocket,
the Terran R. Wow, that's a pretty
serious printer right there.
TIM ELLIS: Yeah.
Yeah, and it's really just early days too.
I mean, I think that's--
- For Ellis, getting to space is just part of the mission.
Fundamentally changing the manufacturing process
for big expensive things like airplanes or wind turbines
is just as important.
TIM ELLIS: So we're starting with rockets.
But I really see us as the world's first application
layer 3D printing company.
I think 3D printing will be able to build
much better products faster.
It's really about increasing the speed
of learning and lowering the barrier to entry
for trying experiments.
- 3, 2, 1, zero.
- If this all sounds very ambitious,
that's because it is.
Ellis and many on his team have a lot of experience building
rockets for firms like Blue Origin and SpaceX,
and have raised over a billion dollars
in funding in just the last year.
But Relativity has yet to put a rocket into space.
You guys are building rockets in a completely different way
in an industry that is inherently risky
and about reducing that risk.
Have people been suspicious about this new approach?
TIM ELLIS: We've sold more rockets than any other company
in history before launch.
So I think people are quite confident in the test
data we've showed them to date.
- But the proof is in the pudding
and you guys haven't flown yet.
TIM ELLIS: Yeah, haven't flown yet.
But all the momentum is there.
And you're definitely right.
We got to show what we've got.
But major parts of the rocket have already
flown a simulated mission on the ground.
And so I'm quite confident we've gotten
over the hump where 3D printing the rocket is now inevitable.
Truly inevitable.
[music playing]
CARL AZUZ: A woman in Maine got a phone call recently
saying her lost cat was found.
Two problems.
One, the phone call was from a shelter in Florida
1,400 miles away.
And two, she didn't own a cat.
So thing is she had owned a cat six years ago.
Her name was Ashes.
And she'd run away during a birthday party.
The shelter used a microchip to find her original owner.
No one knows how Ashley's got to Florida.
And she was a little beat up with a cold,
some missing teeth, and a coat that needed healing.
But $1,800 later, Ashes is back home and thriving.
Was she caterwauling?
She was caterhauling.
Her American cross cattry journey
might not have taken her so far as a Himalayan, Siberian,
Persian, or Norwegian one.
She might not have crossed the Turkish border or the Savannah.
But it still wasn't Siameasy.
Even if she took a cabbie, she rang up quite a tabby.
And her owner simply Maine couldn't believe it.
I'm Carl Azuz.
Today's shout out takes us to Marine City, Michigan,
where we're happy to see the students of Cardinal
Mooney Catholic High School.
Cats all for CNN.
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