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A lot of people assume material from space only has value when brought back down earths gravity well. This is short sighted and naive imo. The real value is in

A lot of people assume material from space only has value when brought back down earths gravity well. This is short sighted and naive imo. The real value is in building space based industry and settlements ie O’neil cylinders. It maybe true that a gravity well is necessary for some industrial processes. This why low gravity bodies like the Moon and Mars are important.

aetherson 8y ago
Whether Earthlike conditions are necessary for industrial processes is beside the point. Nobody knows how to do any industrial process in space and there is sharply limited demand for space industry right now. Maybe if we get a lively asteroid mining industry going, that will generate demand for other industries in space. Trying to get everything going all at once takes an already insanely difficult project and layers orders of magnitude more complexity on it before payoff.
- Robotbeat 8y ago
  > Nobody knows how to do any industrial process in space... False. Don’t conflate your own ignorance with that of others. There’s an enormous body of literature on in situ resource utilization and in situ manufacturing, including countless lab-scale demos of industrial processes and some also demonstrated in space (for instance, ISS relies on electrolysis for oxygen production and also produces methane with the Sabatier Reaction to recover some of the oxygen as well). Just check out ntrs.nasa.gov for some examples. There are way too many processes to name here.
  - aetherson 8y ago
    Oh god. Did you just suggest electrolysis as the kind of exciting industry that we know how to do in space? In second grade, I assembled some equipment to do electrolysis. This does not make me a captain of industry.
    - detritus 8y ago
      I'm with you here - I'm really not sure how a load of lab studies [in a gravity well], theoretical papers [also in a gravity well] and some fairly predictable processes in low gravity equate to humanity's 'knowing' how to 'do' a wide range of heavy industrial processes that haven't, for the very most part, ever even been attempted. I have a fairly hands on job in many ways - one that allows me to explore and develop techniques - so whilst I can often envisage solutions in advance, I'd think it absolute hubris to claim I 'know' much until I've actually done it and proven it. As far as I'm aware, I can't think of anything in even the light industrial range of development that's actually been tried in orbit or low gravity, off-surface. Certainly not enough to deserve being smeared by accusations of ignorance... . - ed I suppose construction of the ISS from pre-made components might qualify as 'light industrial'.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - Robotbeat 8y ago
        It's pretty simple, actually. You put the process you developed in a centrifuge if it doesn't work in microgravity. Much of the life support (and water recovery) system on ISS (which is just a large collection of several industrial processes) uses centrifuges for this purpose.
        detritus 8y ago
        You make it sound so easy! Consider a 'simple' example — what might the effect be of a high speed, high mass 'drilling widget' be in such a body? Not much, probably, at least in the very short term. Cumulatively though? A device weighing a few hundred KG, rotating at a few thousand RPM for a few hours or days or weeks at a time? What effect do you think that might have on your 'quite simple' centripetal environment, floating as it is in zero g? Sure, it can be accounted for — but it's not 'pretty simple, actually'. Anything but.
    - Robotbeat 8y ago
      The sentence I responded to said "Nobody knows how to do any industrial process in space" not "exciting industry." Electrolysis is an industrial process, and not only do we know how to do it (as you showed in second grade), but it is done operationally. You set the bar pretty low, easy to prove you wrong.
maxander 8y ago
The issue is that, presently, all the engineers, and the industrial base, are on Earth. So, space has to value-add to Earth in order to pay their salaries, if any effort is going to persist long enough to get to the self-sustaining picture you speak of. Being short-sighted is sometimes correct- you’ve got to cross the foreground to reach the distance.

aetherson 8y ago

Whether Earthlike conditions are necessary for industrial processes is beside the point. Nobody knows how to do any industrial process in space and there is sharply limited demand for space industry right now. Maybe if we get a lively asteroid mining industry going, that will generate demand for other industries in space. Trying to get everything going all at once takes an already insanely difficult project and layers orders of magnitude more complexity on it before payoff.

Robotbeat 8y ago
> Nobody knows how to do any industrial process in space... False. Don’t conflate your own ignorance with that of others. There’s an enormous body of literature on in situ resource utilization and in situ manufacturing, including countless lab-scale demos of industrial processes and some also demonstrated in space (for instance, ISS relies on electrolysis for oxygen production and also produces methane with the Sabatier Reaction to recover some of the oxygen as well). Just check out ntrs.nasa.gov for some examples. There are way too many processes to name here.
- aetherson 8y ago
  Oh god. Did you just suggest electrolysis as the kind of exciting industry that we know how to do in space? In second grade, I assembled some equipment to do electrolysis. This does not make me a captain of industry.
  - detritus 8y ago
    I'm with you here - I'm really not sure how a load of lab studies [in a gravity well], theoretical papers [also in a gravity well] and some fairly predictable processes in low gravity equate to humanity's 'knowing' how to 'do' a wide range of heavy industrial processes that haven't, for the very most part, ever even been attempted. I have a fairly hands on job in many ways - one that allows me to explore and develop techniques - so whilst I can often envisage solutions in advance, I'd think it absolute hubris to claim I 'know' much until I've actually done it and proven it. As far as I'm aware, I can't think of anything in even the light industrial range of development that's actually been tried in orbit or low gravity, off-surface. Certainly not enough to deserve being smeared by accusations of ignorance... . - ed I suppose construction of the ISS from pre-made components might qualify as 'light industrial'.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - Robotbeat 8y ago
      It's pretty simple, actually. You put the process you developed in a centrifuge if it doesn't work in microgravity. Much of the life support (and water recovery) system on ISS (which is just a large collection of several industrial processes) uses centrifuges for this purpose.
      - detritus 8y ago
        You make it sound so easy! Consider a 'simple' example — what might the effect be of a high speed, high mass 'drilling widget' be in such a body? Not much, probably, at least in the very short term. Cumulatively though? A device weighing a few hundred KG, rotating at a few thousand RPM for a few hours or days or weeks at a time? What effect do you think that might have on your 'quite simple' centripetal environment, floating as it is in zero g? Sure, it can be accounted for — but it's not 'pretty simple, actually'. Anything but.
  - Robotbeat 8y ago
    The sentence I responded to said "Nobody knows how to do any industrial process in space" not "exciting industry." Electrolysis is an industrial process, and not only do we know how to do it (as you showed in second grade), but it is done operationally. You set the bar pretty low, easy to prove you wrong.

maxander 8y ago

The issue is that, presently, all the engineers, and the industrial base, are on Earth. So, space has to value-add to Earth in order to pay their salaries, if any effort is going to persist long enough to get to the self-sustaining picture you speak of. Being short-sighted is sometimes correct- you’ve got to cross the foreground to reach the distance.