Just because launch costs were high and these weren't viable before, doesn't mean they won't be viable now.
For pharma, its not universally true. There are few things that can be done better in space, but by far not everything. Research in space makes more sense then actual production. Again even the best case is hard to see how its going to justify the valuation.
> And I bet there are hundreds of other examples.
Hundreds of other even more half baked examples. You need to account for launch cost, space constraints, space environment, landing and recovery. We have been doing this for 40 years and the medicine and fiber are things that have been talked about for 30 years at least.
You're talking about achieving highly marginal gains in product quality at the expense of having to launch into space literally every single part of the production process and recover it from space.
Which includes things like "ruggedizing what you launch so it can survive the launch" and "also ruggedizing it to survive the landing".
Those seem like classic examples of what you get when you have a solution in search of problems.
What’s the monetary value of the incremental improvements in those products, and how does it compare to the cost of setting up and operating manufacturing facilities in orbit?