Factories in Space
factoriesinspace.com
factoriesinspace.com
Bezos does not expect to live long enough to see it happen, but he claims to want to put the building blocks in place.
On the website, they suggest that these byproducts, i.e. waste, could effectively be dumped into space, where the solar winds would carry it out to the asteroid belt.
I have no expertise to determine if this would ever be viable, but seems like they do at least answer this particular question of yours.
Edit: I checked and solar wind starts at 60K km so there is no solar wind at LEO and 60K km is way beyond geostationary where it is already considered too expensive to bring things back to Earth.
I assume you mean "on the moon or on earth" since you can't really mine in empty space. The process of either (without air, for a start) would make them so different as to be incomparable.
Mining on the moon would have so many expenses associated, that you could spend the same amount making earth-based processes cleaner. The issue is that it's economical not to do so, so earth processes are dirty by design and due to lack of regulation.
Obviously, the goal is to do the mining in space (moon, asteroids, etc.), and then use those raw materials in space factories.
Still, it's a fascinating idea.
Unless you shoot stuff away with railguns, the relevant question might be "at which point are solar winds a bigger factor than drag". I guess it's highly dependent on the exact gas. We lose Helium that way from earth (buoyancy brings it up, where solar winds catch it), so at some height it should work for CO2.
It only really works for gases though, and then only for things that stay reasonably gaseous in orbit (low pressure and large temperature swings). For any solid or liquid you have to worry about it crashing into you on one of the orbits, and at orbital speeds tiny things can impact with a lot of energy.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_of_influence_(astrodyna...
Just to be in the solar wind alone you’d have to be outside the magnetosheath ~60K Km at its closest point, 35K Km is geostationary orbit which costs $10K kg to get to with falcon 9. And now you’d have to send up a whole falcon 9 in order to bring the non byproduct mass back to Earth which would defeat the purpose of venting CO2 to begin with. For those who don’t know it takes roughly the same delta V to bring things back down as it took to send them up.
Though I'm wondering: If manufacturing were done on the moon, would it be safe and feasible to haul some wastes to the lunar equator during the cold of night and let it burn up when daytime temps naturally exceed the boiling point of water from solar power alone?
Concrete is most made material and its components come from Earth. It is used on Earth. It is made in such quantities that it is produced locally because it infeasible to transport it long distances. Wood comes from Earth, used on Earth, and makes no sense to manufacture in space.
Chemical industry is another good example, where a lot of the source materials come from Earth (nitrogen, petroleum, gas). All of the processes are designed to work in atmosphere and under gravity. My guess is that nitrogen-based chemicals will be shipped to space for a long time.
Steel is made in huge quantities, with ore trains, ore ships, and giant steel factories. My guess is that even had a free iron asteroid in space, that wouldn't make sense to mine it because getting the results down would be too expensive.
Also, there is a lot of large-scale manufacturing that wouldn't make sense to move because the result is used on Earth. Ship building is a prime example where building anywhere other than next to body of water doesn't make sense. Complex objects also have a lot of parts which means shipping them to space or moving the whole supply chain.
The exception is industry being used for use in space.
New resources, new ideas, new efficiencies benefit all of us.
Amazon's push to dominate retail markets via Basics, etc., and the anti-competitive practices he enables, only serves to portend an obvious conclusion that Bezos wants to own not just the marketplace but every component of goods production.
I can imagine someone making rockets from multiple separately launched parts that are then assembled in space. It would allow to use well tested rockets to launch smaller parts instead of trying to build a huge rocket at once.
Shelby finally retiring has been a great boon for NASA's human space exploration programs.
Also, technically the Lunar Gateway would fit your second point, considering that it's split into a separate habitation module and power+propulsion element.
You need to solve the material-cost problem first. Either a space gun / elevator or ISRU. Otherwise, assembling on the ground is cheaper for everything but the most massive objects. (At which point a constellation or fleet usually makes more sense.)
> would allow to use well tested rockets to launch smaller parts instead of trying to build a huge rocket at once
Bigger rockets have moderate economies of scale. Optimising for a particular launch vehicle doesn’t make sense in the long run.
The farther humans go into deep space, the more important it will be to generate products with local materials, a practice called in-situ resource utilization.
Manufacturing seems possible but is several orders of magnitude more difficult because many processes on earth simply aren’t viable without access to earths vast array of manufacturing infrastructure, organic chemicals, or even gravity.
The company "Made in Space, Inc" responsible for creating the 3D printer, since acquired by Redwire. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_In_Space
Also we only need a small manufacturing-capable space station to build a larger space station out of materials mined from asteroids.
In zero gravity you don't have to worry about pressurizing it, but you do exchange a new set of difficulties.
It’s much cheaper to master fluid suspension.
Honestly, I just wanted to nerd out.
Funny, how easy it can be to retain those totally unimportant facts, isn't it? I credit my English to a huge extend to stuff like that, after almost all those books came in English.
I read somewhere that some specialist types of fibre optic cables already make sense to make in orbit just for the microgravity, but I don't know if that was a proposal to try it or if they already do…
They are testing various prototypes on the ISS since 2019. Apparently the fibre quality is great and better than what we can make on earth [1], and the current prototypes are about automating the process.
I suspect that once access to space (and space stations) becomes cheap enough we will identify a lot of manufacturing processes where gravity is detrimental, and where the end product is valuable enough that shipping to and from space makes sense.
1: https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/flightopportunit...
Fabs are probably the worst factories to put in space because of how much human adjustment they require. Also, the equipment is expensive and delicate, and redesigning it to work in space would be enormously expensive. It would be ruinous to lose one. They require tons of chemicals to work, that have to come from Earth, and produce a lot of nasty waste, which still have to dispose of in space.
For chip fab in particular, since current processes require a lot of water, and water is very good as radiation shielding, such a facility in space would probably just store water in the walls.
Alternatively I've seen some companies successfully rad-hardening from the software level. Effectively software that is tolerant to random bit flips.
Or work in a permanent shadow. Cosmic rays are easier to deal with than solar radiation.
There are sun synchronous orbits (and the orbit at the dawn/dusk terminator is an interesting one - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit ), but there isn't an easy orbit around the Earth such that it is always in shadow... or rather, that's the Earth/Sun L2 point... which is where the JWST is. At that distance you lose the magnetic shielding of the Earth (and makes it even more expensive to get materials to and from it).
Seems like they are reliable enough for their job and just need the occasional reboot. For more critical systems you could probably get by with three computers voting on the result, and if they disagree the outlier gets rebooted (a fairly standard setup in aviation and space)
Right now, space manufacturing makes sense for exactly nothing. With enough research, it can in theory make sense for almost anything.
Definitely an interesting problem to look into. :)
Unexpected, I know. But https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFufOGZBwFM try that for size. Isn't it beautiful?
The well paced blips of the factory ships Slide past our orbit's brink Like a swarm of bees in the girder trees Come to our flowers to drink
And the earth is clean as a springtime dream No factory smokes appear For they've left the land to the gardener's hand And they all are circling here
When people are talking about living on Mars or on the Moon, sane people automatically categorize them as crackpots, whereas moving heavy industry in orbit with the help of automation at least sets a path for some sort of ROI which is not the ridiculous "hop in the rocket bro we are going to Mars lmao"
This is mostly guff from what I’ve seen, at least in the next hundred years.
For someone smarter at physics than me - I get why this 'feels' like weightlessness/0G, but does it actually have that impact when it comes to physical manufacturing?
If it does, wouldn't terrestrial factories that have some sort of inertial roller coaster in them (akin to a vomit comet) be the cheaper/better answer?
EDIT: I think a lot of people are missing the point of my question here. Remember, objects in orbit are accelerating because they are changing direction.
This is different that being motionless in a far field with microgravity.
But in practice, does that acceleration matter for physical manufacturing?
I believe it's you who are missing the point. Acceleration is irrelevant, it's how it's transmitted that matters. You feel gravity because the ground prevents you from falling exerting an opposite force, that is transmitted mechanically along your body.
There is no difference between free falling and no gravity except in monster gravitational fields like the one close to an event horizon where differential gravity (tide) could torn you apart. In any other situation you can safely assume that all the points in an object are pulled uniformly.
I'm also not asking about what our brains are conditioned to feel. I am simply asking - is the constant acceleration of orbit fundamentally different than no acceleration, even if both would feel the same?
No-one has answered that in a compelling way.
Because to be clear - in one, no forces are being applied and in another, there are forces being applied (how else would you change directions?).
Brain can't feel without senses input.
is the constant acceleration of orbit fundamentally different than no acceleration...?
No.
how else would you change directions?
You don't. You keep going straight, space is deformed by gravity.
But even if you look at it like in classical mechanics, the effect is applied uniformly to every particle of your body, so it makes no difference.
Ask yourself this: how do you feel gravity right now?
Ok but why?
>You don't. You keep going straight, space is deformed by gravity.
Yeah, and if gravity weren't deforming the space, objects otherwise in orbit would move differently. That's just changing the mechanics (presumably in an attempt to appear more knowledgeable?) to avoid the question of why two wildly different scenarios (no forces vs. offsetting forces) are the exact same.
>But even if you look at it like in classical mechanics, the effect is applied uniformly to every particle of your body, so it makes no difference.
Again, my question is why in your model is the uniform application of a force the same as no application of a force?
>Ask yourself this: how do you feel gravity right now?
You don't have a sense for your own weight? I do and I don't know how to describe that feeling beyond that.
If I were in a true extremely low gravity situation (like deep space) I would feel differently.
O_o
Again, my question is why in your model is the uniform application of a force the same as no application of a force?
That's not my model, it's Einstein's.
Orbit is free fall. It’s equally correct to describe a falling object’s weightlessness as moving as fast as gravity.
> get why this 'feels' like weightlessness/0G, but does it actually have that impact when it comes to physical manufacturing
No, it’s the first postulate of Einstein’s theory of special relativity [1]. Free fall and the absence of gravity are as indistinguishable as acceleration and the its presence.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postulates_of_special_relati...
In a curved orbit, that may be true at points, but for an extended object, tidal forces come into play:
For example, it was very hard to replicate the moon's gravity when training pilots to land on the moon. How do you 'fake' a different gravity on Earth? It's pretty hard to do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw8kRZEvh_s
EDIT: to your question about centripetal force, either you experience acceleration or you don't. Since gravity is in equilibrium with centripetal force relative to movement around Earth you shouldn't get acceleration from this. However, you will get micro g's from rotation of the station itself, etc.
If there is no acceleration, then how are objects changing direction?
Also I should add, it is confusing thinking about 0g, because obviously bodies in a gravity well are experiencing a gravitational force. Really we're talking about 0 acceleration, where g is the acceleration due to gravity. In orbit this g acceleration is cancelled out by centripetal acceleration to produce 0 acceleration, or free fall.
If it were not for the force of gravity, an object in motion would move in the direction of its instantaneous velocity. It does not do that, it instead accelerates toward the center of the gravitational body.
>In orbit this g acceleration is cancelled out by centripetal acceleration to produce 0 acceleration, or free fall.
But again, they do not "cancel out," otherwise how is the instantaneous velocity constantly changing direction?
Throw a ball parallel to the ground. Now throw it faster. It will land farther away than last time, right? Keep throwing it faster and faster and the ball will keep landing further and further away from you. Eventually, you throw it so fast that the ball flys through the air, all the way around the earth and lands back at your feet from behind you. You've just completed a single orbit around the earth. Keep throwing it faster and faster until the ball flies past you forever without touching the ground. This is a little hard to imagine because this speed is tremendous and something no one can really experience on earth.
The ball is constantly falling away from that direction you threw it originally due to gravity. Gravity is always acting on the ball and is always acting on any satellite in space as well. Gravity doesn't change that much for how high satellites fly. However the speed of the ball is just so such that it will never change from the height you originally threw it from.
Catch the ball out of the air and throw it just a little faster this time. The ball will still orbit but will pass over your head this time. The speed of the ball dictates the orbit altitude. Mass also factors in as well but not much for something so small. Grab it out of the air and keep throwing it faster and faster and eventually, the speed is able to overcome gravity and the ball leaves Earth's gravity entirely.
In Low Earth Orbit, there is just enough atmosphere to provide some minor air resistance that will actually slow down that ball you threw. As the ball slows, the orbit altitude decreases. As the altitude decreases, the atmosphere gets thicker and air resistance increases which makes the ball slow even more. It gets so slow that it can't maintain an orbit any more so it lands on the surface. If you attach a small rocket engine to the back of the ball, you can occasionally turn it on to maintain the exact speed you need for that orbit. If you use the rocket engine to make the ball go faster, you can raise the orbit. Rotate the ball 180deg and now you can use the rocket engine to slow the ball to lower the orbit.
Astronauts in space constantly have gravity on them but they are moving at such high speeds that gravity is not able to change their altitude. They are always "falling" just like the ball but never land. They float around inside their spacecraft because those too are falling constantly.
A man can dream.
As you're going up the space elevator, you would also be picking up horizontal velocity as you ascend. At ISS altitudes there would be enough atmospheric particles to slow you down once you got off, but it would take a while; probably on the order of years. Base jumping would not be a good idea.
Unbelievable misunderstanding of ST to think markets, or 'economic drivers' in their terms, would lead to anything like ST... The whole point of ST is that they are in communism or anarchism even. Nobody on the Enterprise was getting paid
This is also what I say to people who propose a permanent Mars colony. They should be re-creating the Biosphere project right now and making it a success before the rocket is ready to go. There are a lot of problems that are seemingly still unaddressed with the whole project.
I'm not saying we shouldn't test everything we can. We should, absolutely. But we also have to accept that the absence of gravity and operating in a vacuum are two major factors we could never adequately test on Earth.
Similar vibe to cats on keyboards in space, you know?
https://www.knowyourmeme.com/memes/cat-on-a-keyboard-in-spac...
Sorry
Here's a good summary of why it's mostly pipe dreams at the current tech level:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/exped...
The tyranny of the rocket equation describes the exponential fuel cost of lifting propellant, with propellant, out of a gravity well.
One workaround is non-propellant launch [1], e.g. an orbital rail gun. (Fusion propulsion is still tyrannical because you’re carrying your propellant.) The other is in-situ resource utilisation, i.e. not lifting out of a gravity well.
The response that just hand-waves a bunch of really hard problems or invents tech that doesn't exist.
I get it, HN has a lot of tech-optimists, but these responses are very tiring. Has there been legitimate significant progress on orbital guns or space elevators since 2012?
The only maybe possible exception would be to pump so much energy into your reaction mass that it gains a significant amount of mass from relativity, but even that is engineering in the "it's probably easier to build a space elevator" realm.
The tyranny of the rocket equation is irrelevant to the problem of extraterrestrial manufacturing, at least in the short term. It’s all ISRU.
> Has there been legitimate significant progress on orbital guns or space elevators since 2012
Actually, yes. I’m sceptical of SpinLaunch. But they are making real progress on the technology, even if they aren’t the ones to complete the package to orbital delivery.