It was made in space before it ended up here on earth, where it was made before it was sent back into space, where it was made again before returning to earth.
InsideYourLights on
And before that who knows how many layers of astroid impacts were needed to make that happen.
ResidentPositive4122 on
Really cool stuff. There’s another team that got a NIAC grant to blow glass in space (they’re thinking Moon surface, since there’s pretty much everything there but the argon / other gases that they might use). I know NASA also used polymer 3d printing before, now metal.
In general I think the “3d printing revolution” has been a bit underwhelming, there were people saying that everyone will own one, and it’ll be the death of parts & utensils, but that hasn’t happened yet. But in remote places, ISS / Moon / Mars, this makes perfect sense. Mass is mass, but if you can carry a roll of filament or a “bag” of metal and then produce whatever parts you need, that would really make it worthwhile to study, fund and improve the tech.
And further out we might even start to see mining -> grinding / separating -> printing in situ. Bring chips, motors, boards, etc and “print” your spars and everything else for your machines right there. Cool stuff.
Yonutz33 on
A little sparse on exact info, what alloy, sls/fdm/something else…
Checktheusernombre on
Who’s making metal in space? We have some blacksmiths up there we don’t know about?
pebble_in_salad on
How much data would they have lost making it a benchy though?
6 Comments
It was made in space before it ended up here on earth, where it was made before it was sent back into space, where it was made again before returning to earth.
And before that who knows how many layers of astroid impacts were needed to make that happen.
Really cool stuff. There’s another team that got a NIAC grant to blow glass in space (they’re thinking Moon surface, since there’s pretty much everything there but the argon / other gases that they might use). I know NASA also used polymer 3d printing before, now metal.
In general I think the “3d printing revolution” has been a bit underwhelming, there were people saying that everyone will own one, and it’ll be the death of parts & utensils, but that hasn’t happened yet. But in remote places, ISS / Moon / Mars, this makes perfect sense. Mass is mass, but if you can carry a roll of filament or a “bag” of metal and then produce whatever parts you need, that would really make it worthwhile to study, fund and improve the tech.
And further out we might even start to see mining -> grinding / separating -> printing in situ. Bring chips, motors, boards, etc and “print” your spars and everything else for your machines right there. Cool stuff.
A little sparse on exact info, what alloy, sls/fdm/something else…
Who’s making metal in space? We have some blacksmiths up there we don’t know about?
How much data would they have lost making it a benchy though?