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They claim the kind of fiber (ZBLAN) fetches $1M/kg when manufactured on Earth. Looking elsewhere, I see that premium space made ZBLAN because it would be of h
by thinkcontext 8y ago
They claim the kind of fiber (ZBLAN) fetches $1M/kg when manufactured on Earth. Looking elsewhere, I see that premium space made ZBLAN because it would be of higher quality could fetch as high as $21M/kg.
https://sites.google.com/site/cmapproject/case-studies/exotic-glasses-and-fibers https://sites.google.com/site/cmapproject/case-studies/exoti...
Doing some back of the envelope calculations, a SpaceX cargo Dragon can return 3,000 kg to Earth. If they can achieve $1M kg advantage in value that would be $3B. Wow, that's enough to get anyone's attention.
- umvi 8y ago> They claim the kind of fiber (ZBLAN) fetches $1M/kg when manufactured on Earth. Because supply is so low perhaps? > If they can achieve $1M kg advantage in value that would be $3B. Wow, that's enough to get anyone's attention. I suspect the value would drop significantly as supply increases. Gold would be $1M/kg too if it were extremely rare and difficult to extract from the earth. As soon as it's less rare it's a lot less valuable.
- thinkcontext 8y agoI would guess the price is high because its really hard to make. And I doubt the cost of space made ZBLAN would be less than the cost of terrestrially made. The question is would there be enough demand for super high quality ZBLAN to cover the costs of doing it in space? If the value created by space made product was high enough it could kill off terrestrial production. But I couldn't find any information about the size of the ZBLAN market, for all I know 3,000 kg could be many years worth of consumption. So, this is all guesswork but my back of the envelope calculation at least shows that the economics are not crazy.