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Orbital manufacturing will pay enormous technological dividends and help take care of Earth. If you step out of the parochial world where we happen to live on

Orbital manufacturing will pay enormous technological dividends and help take care of Earth. If you step out of the parochial world where we happen to live on this planet, the fact that every one of our manufacturing processes is built around an ambient acceleration of 10 m/s^2 is weird and limiting. Beyond the freedom from gravity, orbital manufacturing provides for absolutely perfect vibration isolation (see LISA mission for an example). Made in Space Fiber / FOMS is just the tip of the iceberg. Semiconductor fabs are going up there sooner or later.

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
Are the energy savings really enough to justify sending stuff up and bringing it back down?
- nickparker 7y ago
  It's not about energy, it's about processes that literally don't work on Earth. See Made in Space fiber[0] for an early example - they're producing best-in-class optical fibers which can't be made on Earth because convection introduces crystalline impurities. Their value per kg is attractive enough to make this a profitable business with today's launch costs. As launch costs drop and people explore this space we're going to discover a _lot_ of such problems. Solutions / mixtures essentially don't separate in micro-g so you can grow much better crystals, smelt very high entropy alloys, do all sorts of awesome tissue engineering, etc. The vibration isolation thing is also a huge force multiplier for all this. Ultra-precision manufacturing is a game of complete and total process control. Right now we spend absurd sums on isolation systems to block vibrations from the truck driving by half a mile away. In orbit you just make sure anything with moving parts is on a separate free body from your isolated component and they fly in formation. The LISA mission is doing this to position ultra-perfect reference objects and detect gravitational waves with baselines measured in thousands of kilometers. [0]: https://madeinspace.us/capabilities-and-technology/fiber-optics/ https://madeinspace.us/capabilities-and-technology/fiber-opt...
  - jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
    I like this stuff. Materials engineering is cool.

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago

Are the energy savings really enough to justify sending stuff up and bringing it back down?

nickparker 7y ago
It's not about energy, it's about processes that literally don't work on Earth. See Made in Space fiber[0] for an early example - they're producing best-in-class optical fibers which can't be made on Earth because convection introduces crystalline impurities. Their value per kg is attractive enough to make this a profitable business with today's launch costs. As launch costs drop and people explore this space we're going to discover a _lot_ of such problems. Solutions / mixtures essentially don't separate in micro-g so you can grow much better crystals, smelt very high entropy alloys, do all sorts of awesome tissue engineering, etc. The vibration isolation thing is also a huge force multiplier for all this. Ultra-precision manufacturing is a game of complete and total process control. Right now we spend absurd sums on isolation systems to block vibrations from the truck driving by half a mile away. In orbit you just make sure anything with moving parts is on a separate free body from your isolated component and they fly in formation. The LISA mission is doing this to position ultra-perfect reference objects and detect gravitational waves with baselines measured in thousands of kilometers. [0]: https://madeinspace.us/capabilities-and-technology/fiber-optics/ https://madeinspace.us/capabilities-and-technology/fiber-opt...
- jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
  I like this stuff. Materials engineering is cool.