Jessica Frick wants To build ovens in space. His company, Astral Materials, based in California, designs machines that can develop precious orbit materials that could be used in medicine, semiconductors, etc. Or, as she says, “we build a box that makes money in space.”
Scientists have long suggested that the microgravity environment of terrestrial orbit could allow the production of better quality products than possible on earth. Astronauts have experienced crystals—A crucial component of electronic circuits – until 1973, on the Skylab space station of NASA. But progress has been slow. For decades, manufacturing in space has been experimental rather than commercial.
All of this is ready to change. A multitude of new companies use the lower costs of launching in space, associated with emerging means of turning things on earth, to rekindle manufacturing in space. The area becomes “massively” more busy, explains Mike Curtis-Vouse, head of orbit maintenance, assembly and manufacturing during the catapult of satellite research applications based in the United Kingdom. He adds that by 2035 “anticipation is that the global space economy will be an industry of several dollars, whose manufacturing in space is probably in the region of around $ 100 billion.”
In its simplest manufacturing, in space, refers to everything that is made in space which can then be used on earth or in space itself. The absence of severity allows unique manufacturing processes that cannot be reproduced on earth, thanks to the interesting physics of the weighting almost.
One of these processes is the growth of crystals, which play a vital role in Semiconductive. On Earth, engineers take a small crystal of high purity silicon seeds and plunge it into melted silicon to create a larger crystal of high quality silicon which can be cut into platelets and used in electronics. But the effect of severity on the growth process can introduce impurities. “Silicon now has an insoluble problem,” says Joshua Western, CEO of the British company Space Forge. “We can't make it purer.”
The growth of these crystals in space could lead to smaller plates, says Western: “You can almost press the reset button on what we think is the limit of a semiconductor.”
Crystalline growth applications are not limited to semiconductors, but could also lead to better quality pharmaceutics and other scientific breakthroughs of materials.
Other products made in space could be produced with similar advantages. In January, China announced that it had made a New revolutionary metal alloy On its Tiangong space station which was much lighter and stronger than comparable alloys on earth. And the unique low severity environment can offer new possibilities in medical research. “When you turn off gravity, you are able to make something like an organ,” said Mike Gold, president of the Civil and International Space Activity in Redwire, a Florida -based company that has experienced manufacturing in the international space station for years. “If you try to do this on earth, it would be crushed.”
A key challenge for manufacturing in space is the way you really get equipment in space and land products in a way that makes production on a large scale viable. But rockets like Falcon 9 of SpaceX have has considerably reduced the cost access to space, while companies such as Space Forge and Californian company Varda Space Industries develop Return of materials on earth.
Varda has already controlled two missions to demonstrate this capacity, dropping the capsules for an landing in the UTAH desert and the Australian Outback. During its first mission last year, the company managed to make crystals An antiviral medication called ritonavirvir. Eric Lasker, Varda income director, says the market potential and health benefits could be “dramatic enough” for products like this. “It can really help people here,” he says.
As orbital manufacturing capacities are increasing in the coming years, things could increase quickly. “I imagine that the manufacturing facilities in orbit will look like factories in space,” explains Lasker. “You will see resorts or ready -to -use vehicles. It is not very difficult to see this future.”
However, it is the future. Currently, the manufacture of space “seems to be a novelty”, explains Curtis-Vouse, but “I think that very quickly, in 10 years, it will be considered as usual business.”
