The Future of Manufacturing Might Be in Space – Products made in space—and used on Earth—could be a reality in the coming years.
https://www.wired.com/story/why-the-future-of-manufacturing-might-be-in-space/
The Future of Manufacturing Might Be in Space – Products made in space—and used on Earth—could be a reality in the coming years.
https://www.wired.com/story/why-the-future-of-manufacturing-might-be-in-space/
10 Comments
From the article
**Jessica Frick wants** to build furnaces in space. Her company, California-based Astral Materials, is designing machines that can grow valuable materials in orbit that could be used in medicine, semiconductors, and more. Or, as she puts it, “We’re building a box that makes money in space.”
Scientists have long suggested that the microgravity environment of Earth’s orbit could enable the production of higher-quality products than it is possible to make on Earth. Astronauts experimented with [crystals](https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/crystal-growth-experiment-skylab/nasm_A19820444000)—a crucial component of electronic circuitry—as early as 1973, on NASA’s Skylab space station. But progress was slow. For decades, in-space manufacturing has been experimental rather than commercial.
That is all set to change. A host of new companies like Astral are making use of the lower costs of launching into space, coupled with emerging ways to return things to Earth, to reignite in-space manufacturing. The field is getting “massively” busier, says Mike Curtis-Rouse, head of in-orbit servicing, assembly, and manufacturing at the UK-based research organization Satellite Applications Catapult. He adds that by 2035 “the anticipation is that the global space economy is going to be a multitrillion-dollar industry, of which in-space manufacturing is probably in the region of about $100 billion.”
The lower MONITARY cost. The environmental cost would be insane.
Let’s just pack those rockets with fossil fuel and burn it in the upper atmosphere. That will solve all problems!
But the price of launch/return will make products built in space ultra premium.
(the twenty liters of jet fuel used in the process of making each of your nano-perfect hinges)
Trump would have a field day with tariffs on those products !
Trump ia not going to like this, how is he going to tarif it?
Someone please for the love of God protect the moon. I don’t want to look up and see buildings, I don’t want people to wreck the moon the way they are wreaking the planet. Because if the moon goes down, We all go down. Talk about an inhospitable planet without the tides.
I will work on your space factory but that labor is NOT going to be cheap. One or two tours on a space factory better set up anyone for life.
Many many years.
There are some items that are strait up better in space, and weights make a difference (medicine) but you won’t be making cars in space any time soon.
The cost of lifting stuff up and down, no matter how reusable, will still outweigh local production. Also, with automation and robots, the cost of labor is also going away, so even harder to produce value in space.
I know this is all pie in the sky stuff….
But there really are quite a few different products that would greatly benefit from a reduced or controlled gravity environment. Additionally you have constant access to a near perfect vacuum at all times for free. Vacuum is huge in manufacturing.
I think we are a long way off of this, but I do see a very valid case for space production.