Die Zukunft der Herstellung könnte im Weltraum sein

The Future of Manufacturing Might Be in Space

Products made in space—and used on Earth—could be a reality in the coming years.

A host of new companies are making use of the lower costs of launching into space, coupled with emerging ways to return things to Earth, to reignite in-space manufacturing.

Jessica Frick wants to build furnaces in space. Her company, California-based Astral Materials, is designing machines that can grow valuable materials in orbit that could be used in medicine, semiconductors, and more. Or, as she puts it, “We’re building a box that makes money in space.”

Scientists have long suggested that the microgravity environment of Earth’s orbit could enable the production of higher-quality products than it is possible to make on Earth. Astronauts experimented with crystals—a crucial component of electronic circuitry—as early as 1973, on NASA’s Skylab space station. But progress was slow. For decades, in-space manufacturing has been experimental rather than commercial.

That is all set to change. A host of new companies like Astral are making use of the lower costs of launching into space, coupled with emerging ways to return things to Earth, to reignite in-space manufacturing. The field is getting “massively” busier, says Mike Curtis-Rouse, head of in-orbit servicing, assembly, and manufacturing at the UK-based research organization Satellite Applications Catapult. He adds that by 2035 “the anticipation is that the global space economy is going to be a multitrillion-dollar industry, of which in-space manufacturing is probably in the region of about $100 billion.”

At its simplest, in-space manufacturing refers to anything made in space that can then be used on Earth or in space itself. The absence of gravity allows for unique manufacturing processes that cannot be replicated on Earth, thanks to the interesting physics of near-weightlessness.

One such process is crystal growth—in particular, producing seed crystals, which play a vital role in semiconductor manufacturing. On Earth, engineers take a high-purity, small, silicon seed crystal and dip it into molten silicon to create a larger crystal of high-quality silicon that can be sliced into wafers and used in electronics. But the effect of gravity on the growth process can introduce impurities. “Silicon now has an unsolvable problem,” says Joshua Western, CEO of UK company Space Forge. “We basically can’t get it any purer.”

They’ve been saying this since Skylab. Just a few years away.

>“It’s time to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future, You know, this is the new model, where you work in these kind of plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here.“ **– U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick**

If this guy has his way, those space manufacturing jobs will be slave colonies. „You want air? Produce!“ It all makes sense now /s