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> "The work that we're doing now is allowing us to create semiconductors up to 4,000 times purer in space than we can currently make here today," says Josh West

• zwischenzug 10mo ago
  [flagged]
• PunchyHamster 10mo ago
  There is no reason to do it with current processes. It could possibly reduce defect rate/increase yields but I'm not sure impurities are even leading cause now. But we might discover other uses, that's what science is.
  • threethirtytwo 10mo ago
    No way. This is being done because there’s a predictable path to profitability. It’s not just random shot in the dark science you can sometimes see in academia. It’s just this path isn’t clear to us laymen… I know because launching into space isn’t something that will be done just for science
    • wizzwizz4 10mo ago
      Hubble Space Telescope. James Webb Space Telescope.
      • threethirtytwo 10mo ago
        I should’ve specified corporate vs. academia. Those telescopes clearly aren’t corporate. More akin to academia. Corporations won’t go to space just for “science” and that is the case here.
        • wizzwizz4 10mo ago
          That doesn't mean they're going to space for traditional profitability, though. The advertising budget is a classic example: none of those activities are profitable, but they alter market behaviour such that other parts of the company can make money.
          • threethirtytwo 10mo ago
            Yeah going to space is not an "advertising budget".
            • wizzwizz4 10mo ago
              Which doesn't mean it's not another example of the same phenomenon. Many companies do things that are not, and will never be, profitable (in the traditional sense), because they have ulterior motives.
              • threethirtytwo 10mo ago
                False. The objective a company is to make profit, anything else is a side quest and is less relevant. There isn’t an “ulterior” motive here. The motive is clear: profit. We just can’t pinpoint the exact pathway to it in terms of details.
                • wizzwizz4 10mo ago
                  Not all companies have "make profit" as their primary goal. But what I meant by "ulterior motive" was that their space factory may never provide enough output for that alone to justify the cost. Their plan may be for the factory in space to bring money in other ways (e.g. making them eligible for grants they would otherwise not have received).
    • intended 10mo ago
      I came across space forge due to some algorithmic discovery on YT a few months ago. If I am recalling it correctly - They’re focusing on goods that can be made, that have a high $ value vs volume and density. High purity silicon is what they identified.
• MomsAVoxell 10mo ago
  Come on, it’s the BBC - which has a much wider spectrum of audience than you and me. Think with it a little - the statement “in the 5G tower” is intended to bring the context of this event closer to those who are not knowledgeable about this technology, but would nevertheless read the article. You and I may understand that the economies of scale don’t make sense yet - but they could, some day, if this technology succeeds, be relevant to the local neighborhood. To many, the 5G tower is the most mystical, mysterious technology in their neighborhood - and indeed, the silicon ingots being manufactured this way would, eventually, find their way to the local neighborhood if this technology is successful. It would probably have been more appropriate to say “some day these ingots will power the supercomputers in your pocket”, which would be an accurate statement - but that is a whole order of magnitude of different economic scale than in the industrialization of cell networks. Maybe it’d be more appropriate for the BBC writer to have said that satellites might one day benefit from space-grown silicon wafers - but that is still to distant to the Mom and Pop readership they’re targeting in these articles…