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Factories in Space

yearesadpeople 2y ago
It would be ideal to also include the plans for orbiting data centres as well as satellite communication clusters in this very nice resource (since those are entirely _also_ necessary as part of manufacturing in space: alerting, measurement, telemetry, etc.)
- HPsquared 2y ago
  Satellite-to-satellite communication is harder than satellite-to-ground.
zabzonk 2y ago
But look at how hard it is to build a factory or a fab here on Earth...
- swarnie 2y ago
  Depends where. Surrey, sure, applications and planning will set you back a decade and half a billion before you break ground. Lam Dong on the other hand....
bee_rider 2y ago
> We need new economic drivers for spaceflight. Something new and potentially bigger than any existing space industry such as telecommunications, remote sensing, launch and research. This is the missing piece to speed up development for the exciting Star Trek-like future. I believe in-space manufacturing will be the kickstarter and foundation. Has this sort of thing actually worked out historically? I’d expect factories to be build in space if it was economically beneficial, and I’d expect cheap space flight to be a requirement rather than an outcome. We didn’t start working inside cities to justify busses, right?
- daedrdev 2y ago
  Yeah I feel like often it's the complete opposite. For example at the start of the industrial revolution engines were invented to pump water out of deep coal mines because even with the first engines horrendous inefficiency at the bottom of the mine coal was basically free at the manual labor to pump water had gotten to expensive. So similarly, spaceflight needs some initial process, say mining or a zero g industrial process, that would drive the further building of infrastructure and productivity.
- lumost 2y ago
  There are a variety of reasons that space manufacturing could be a good idea from a physics standpoint. These typically range from availability of energy, limited need for environmental regulation provided byproducts don’t fall to earth, or do so at velocities which would destroy the compounds of concern, or availability of materials. If an asteroid is captured, or large scale mining of the moon takes place - it would not make sense to ship raw materials to earth vs. final products. Which gives us a rough roadmap for where this industry would go if it goes anywhere, we’d expect that manufacturing of gravity sensitive or highly toxic products would move to space first, followed by energy or resource intensive industries.
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    Or freaky biohazard stuff.
    - TheTxT 2y ago
      As long as you don't have to send it up in a rocket that could explode in the atmosphere.
    - klooney 2y ago
      You can do gain-of-function research, but only in space.
    - lumost 2y ago
      It might be cheaper to create a bio lab in space for high risk research than to actually run one on earth. I’d imagine the regulatory requirements for maintaining the cdc labs are extreme.
coldtea 2y ago
Wishful thinking. Like Mars, on which we'd already be by now based on promises, but we aren't getting anywhere closer anytime soon... Meanwhile we've been losing the ability to make all kinds of stuff to China, or severely degrade the skills and expertise of the people in places like Boeing compared to the nerds that build the original planes in the 60s and 70s...
reilly3000 2y ago
So not about Factorio: Space Age? nm.
colinator 2y ago
A few years ago there were actually two companies trying to manufacture "zblan optical fiber" (which has better light transmission than normal optical fiber) in orbit: Made In Space, and FOMS. Both of their websites are tombstones now, afaik. The former was also attempting 3d printing in space, and was bought by Redwire. Fascinating tech, but seemed to go nowhere. There are now several 'manufacturing in space platform' companies, like Varda. It's not enough to just be a platform. There needs to be an actual killer app.
eesmith 2y ago
The Current Market Size <> Timeline has "Pharmaceuticals", specifically, "space-grown crystals". This has been tried for decades. It has not proved all that beneficial. Certainly not enough to be a clear economic advantage for doing more in microgravity.

It would be ideal to also include the plans for orbiting data centres as well as satellite communication clusters in this very nice resource (since those are entirely _also_ necessary as part of manufacturing in space: alerting, measurement, telemetry, etc.)

HPsquared 2y ago
Satellite-to-satellite communication is harder than satellite-to-ground.

zabzonk 2y ago

But look at how hard it is to build a factory or a fab here on Earth...

swarnie 2y ago
Depends where. Surrey, sure, applications and planning will set you back a decade and half a billion before you break ground. Lam Dong on the other hand....

bee_rider 2y ago

> We need new economic drivers for spaceflight. Something new and potentially bigger than any existing space industry such as telecommunications, remote sensing, launch and research. This is the missing piece to speed up development for the exciting Star Trek-like future. I believe in-space manufacturing will be the kickstarter and foundation. Has this sort of thing actually worked out historically? I’d expect factories to be build in space if it was economically beneficial, and I’d expect cheap space flight to be a requirement rather than an outcome. We didn’t start working inside cities to justify busses, right?

daedrdev 2y ago
Yeah I feel like often it's the complete opposite. For example at the start of the industrial revolution engines were invented to pump water out of deep coal mines because even with the first engines horrendous inefficiency at the bottom of the mine coal was basically free at the manual labor to pump water had gotten to expensive. So similarly, spaceflight needs some initial process, say mining or a zero g industrial process, that would drive the further building of infrastructure and productivity.
lumost 2y ago
There are a variety of reasons that space manufacturing could be a good idea from a physics standpoint. These typically range from availability of energy, limited need for environmental regulation provided byproducts don’t fall to earth, or do so at velocities which would destroy the compounds of concern, or availability of materials. If an asteroid is captured, or large scale mining of the moon takes place - it would not make sense to ship raw materials to earth vs. final products. Which gives us a rough roadmap for where this industry would go if it goes anywhere, we’d expect that manufacturing of gravity sensitive or highly toxic products would move to space first, followed by energy or resource intensive industries.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  Or freaky biohazard stuff.
  - TheTxT 2y ago
    As long as you don't have to send it up in a rocket that could explode in the atmosphere.
  - klooney 2y ago
    You can do gain-of-function research, but only in space.
  - lumost 2y ago
    It might be cheaper to create a bio lab in space for high risk research than to actually run one on earth. I’d imagine the regulatory requirements for maintaining the cdc labs are extreme.

coldtea 2y ago

Wishful thinking. Like Mars, on which we'd already be by now based on promises, but we aren't getting anywhere closer anytime soon... Meanwhile we've been losing the ability to make all kinds of stuff to China, or severely degrade the skills and expertise of the people in places like Boeing compared to the nerds that build the original planes in the 60s and 70s...

reilly3000 2y ago

So not about Factorio: Space Age? nm.

colinator 2y ago

A few years ago there were actually two companies trying to manufacture "zblan optical fiber" (which has better light transmission than normal optical fiber) in orbit: Made In Space, and FOMS. Both of their websites are tombstones now, afaik. The former was also attempting 3d printing in space, and was bought by Redwire. Fascinating tech, but seemed to go nowhere. There are now several 'manufacturing in space platform' companies, like Varda. It's not enough to just be a platform. There needs to be an actual killer app.

eesmith 2y ago

The Current Market Size <> Timeline has "Pharmaceuticals", specifically, "space-grown crystals". This has been tried for decades. It has not proved all that beneficial. Certainly not enough to be a clear economic advantage for doing more in microgravity.