How Space Factories Are Becoming A Reality

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How Space Factories Are Becoming A Reality​

Space offers a unique environment for research and development because its higher levels of radiation, microgravity and near vacuum-less state allow companies to come up with new manufacturing methods or materials that are not possible on Earth. It's a fledgling market that analysts and several startups are predicting will take off. The market for materials manufactured in space could reach $10 billion by 2030, according to estimates from McKinsey & Co. In-space manufacturing is not entirely new. The International Space Station has hosted several experiments from academics, government agencies and commercial customers for things such as growing human tissue, making purer semiconductors and developing new or better drugs. But access to the ISS has always been competitive and interest continues to grow. A number of space startups see an opportunity to fill this gap for in-space manufacturing demand using compact space factories.

CNBC spoke with two such companies, California-based Varda Space Industries and UK-based Space Forge, to see how the startups hope to make manufacturing in space a profitable business.

Chapters:
00:00 — Introduction
02:23 — Varda Space Industries
08:20 — Space Forge
12:45 — What's next?

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

How Space Factories Are Becoming A Reality​

Space offers a unique environment for research and development because its higher levels of radiation, microgravity and near vacuum-less state allow companies to come up with new manufacturing methods or materials that are not possible on Earth. It's a fledgling market that analysts and several startups are predicting will take off. The market for materials manufactured in space could reach $10 billion by 2030, according to estimates from McKinsey & Co. In-space manufacturing is not entirely new. The International Space Station has hosted several experiments from academics, government agencies and commercial customers for things such as growing human tissue, making purer semiconductors and developing new or better drugs. But access to the ISS has always been competitive and interest continues to grow. A number of space startups see an opportunity to fill this gap for in-space manufacturing demand using compact space factories.

CNBC spoke with two such companies, California-based Varda Space Industries and UK-based Space Forge, to see how the startups hope to make manufacturing in space a profitable business.

Chapters:
00:00 — Introduction
02:23 — Varda Space Industries
08:20 — Space Forge
12:45 — What's next?

Still no easy solutions if you have to spend money to safely land it. Doesn't scale well.

The only real thing you can currently do is to pay to have a self-contained factory box sent up on one of the Dragon ISS cargo missions and since those cargo ships are reusable you get a safe ride back. You then can stop worrying about the launch/landing,

 

[_NOBODY_]

Still no easy solutions if you have to spend money to safely land it. Doesn't scale well.

The only real thing you can currently do is to pay to have a self-contained factory box sent up on one of the Dragon ISS cargo missions and since those cargo ships are reusable you get a safe ride back. You then can stop worrying about the launch/landing,

What if we build a large enough manufacturing facility up there so that we can fully load the rocket that lands these goods down? Will this significantly bring the costs down?

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

What if we build a large enough manufacturing facility up there so that we can fully load the rocket that lands these goods down? Will this significantly bring the costs down?

The problem with any solution is the landing.
It ends up floating on some parachute in the wind and you need to go search for it whether that be on land or sea. Which honestly is just #$@$ stupid. Need to leverage a robotic DreamChaser or something so you can have some consistency in your process.

Land...offload the experiments...thank you very much.


Only option now is to have a dragon cargo scheduled every 6 months to autodock to this big facility and both offload and onload the experiments to bring back and forth to earth.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

What if we build a large enough manufacturing facility up there so that we can fully load the rocket that lands these goods down? Will this significantly bring the costs down?

Wow! Apparently ESA is doing just this

Space Rider - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

including the landing

 

[_NOBODY_]

Wow! Apparently ESA is doing just this

Space Rider - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

including the landing

Holysh*t! It's a proper mobile research station. As cool as this is, I would like to see a manufacturing facility the size of the ISS in the low orbit.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Holysh*t! It's a proper mobile research station. As cool as this is, I would like to see a manufacturing facility the size of the ISS in the low orbit.

I think they should use a SpaceX Starship to send up a lab with a docking ability and have the Space Rider go up periodically to add and retrieve things.

 

[_NOBODY_]

I think they should use a SpaceX Starship to send up a lab with a docking ability and have the Space Rider go up periodically to add and retrieve things.

Yes, send multiple dockable modules in the low orbit and have them all connect with each other to become a full-fledged space manufacturing facility. I wish I was a trillionaire, I would go above and beyond to do this.

Space exploration is great but the only thing about it that appeals to me is collecting data, refining it and then selling this refined data to the highest bidder.