New details on their plans for optical fiber production on orbit.
3 thoughts on “Made In Space”
Ho-Lee Crud. Somebody has finally done it. This is fantastic. New technologies generally take about fifty years to transform the world. I would say this is roughly equivalent to the development of the assembly line around 1900. Within fifty years we are going to have an entire industrial infrastructure in earth orbit. All kinds of things, which we can not even imagine now, will be made there.
I have been pointing out for decades now, usually to very negative reactions, that lunar colonization is economically impractical without a zero-g manufacturing infrastructure to allow profitable exploitation of lunar materials. Regardless of launch cost, there is simply nothing on the moon that can’t be found more cheaply on the earth. Now, however, now, that will change. Within fifty years, it will become less expensive for orbiting manufacturers to get raw materials from the moon, or asteroids, than from the earth. People on the moon will be able to trade things for the goods they cannot make themselves, but will need just to survive. This advance, even more than those being made by Space-X and Bigelow, is the critical one for opening up the solar system. This century is going to be glorious.
It is not clear to me that ZBLAN manufacture will soon benefit from lunar feedstocks. Things like barium, fluorine and zirconium aren’t easily obtained on the Moon compared to Earth (no hydrothermal processes or weathering/concentration of zircons). Perhaps manufacture of spindles and reentry vehicles?
What will happen is a large market in LEO will drive down costs overall, making all space schemes more practical, or at least more affordable. At the very least an Antarctic-style lunar scenario becomes reasonable.
This is all assuming ZBLAN fibers make the jump to true commercial products. While promising, the chickens aren’t fully hatched yet.
@Paul D.: +1
Also…
“The most challenging part of doing anything in space is the finite resource of pressurized volume — aka room for activities.”
“Pressurized volume” for “activities”? If they can’t work in both zero g and hard vacuum they need to re-think their business plan.
Ho-Lee Crud. Somebody has finally done it. This is fantastic. New technologies generally take about fifty years to transform the world. I would say this is roughly equivalent to the development of the assembly line around 1900. Within fifty years we are going to have an entire industrial infrastructure in earth orbit. All kinds of things, which we can not even imagine now, will be made there.
I have been pointing out for decades now, usually to very negative reactions, that lunar colonization is economically impractical without a zero-g manufacturing infrastructure to allow profitable exploitation of lunar materials. Regardless of launch cost, there is simply nothing on the moon that can’t be found more cheaply on the earth. Now, however, now, that will change. Within fifty years, it will become less expensive for orbiting manufacturers to get raw materials from the moon, or asteroids, than from the earth. People on the moon will be able to trade things for the goods they cannot make themselves, but will need just to survive. This advance, even more than those being made by Space-X and Bigelow, is the critical one for opening up the solar system. This century is going to be glorious.
It is not clear to me that ZBLAN manufacture will soon benefit from lunar feedstocks. Things like barium, fluorine and zirconium aren’t easily obtained on the Moon compared to Earth (no hydrothermal processes or weathering/concentration of zircons). Perhaps manufacture of spindles and reentry vehicles?
What will happen is a large market in LEO will drive down costs overall, making all space schemes more practical, or at least more affordable. At the very least an Antarctic-style lunar scenario becomes reasonable.
This is all assuming ZBLAN fibers make the jump to true commercial products. While promising, the chickens aren’t fully hatched yet.
@Paul D.: +1
Also…
“The most challenging part of doing anything in space is the finite resource of pressurized volume — aka room for activities.”
“Pressurized volume” for “activities”? If they can’t work in both zero g and hard vacuum they need to re-think their business plan.