Im Weltraum gemacht? Fabriken mit Zero Gravity sind die nächste Grenze – von Bioprinting -Organen bis hin zu den Rechenzentren der KI -Rechnung könnte sich die Weltraumwirtschaft als einflussreich erweisen wie die industrielle Revolution, sagt die königliche Gesellschaft
https://www.thetimes.com/article/7a9d11af-b3af-4e7e-8d53-ad562e04cd8e?shareToken=ce347d5ebd1b5f4167d7fd982b78edaa
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From the article
A revolution is coming, a report for the Royal Society has said, and its ramifications “are as consequential to today’s industry, society and culture as were the 18th-century Industrial Revolution and the 20th-century digital revolution in their times”.
The scientific academy’s report, which considers the next 50 years of the space economy, argues that the costs of getting into space are becoming low enough that significant benefits can be realised. “Space can offer enormous real-world, practical impacts for citizens, the public sector and industry,” it says.
These impacts range from making products such as novel pharmaceuticals or bioprinted organs to taking advantage of near-limitless solar power.
Sir Martin Sweeting, distinguished professor of space engineering at the University of Surrey and one of the chairs of [the Royal Society report](https://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/space2075/), said it was clear that the commercialisation of space was approaching escape velocity.
does this mean they’ve worked out the heat management problem in space, or is this more techbro style hype?
I want to go back to my high school environmental science teacher and rub this in his face. He laughed me out of the room when I said the future of humanity is in space.
There is one example that is proven to work: high quality optical fiber. Experiments on this have been ongoing on the ISS since 2018, and [Flawless Photonics](https://www.flawless-photonics.com/) is trying to commercialize it. Making optical fiber in zero gravity makes for a more uniform product, and the premium they can charge for that is big enough that making it in space can be economically viable. Even after the sunset of the ISS.
Everything else is hopes and dreams. There are likely a lot of things that benefit from being produced in zero-gravity that we just don’t know about yet. But you also need a product that’s reasonably light and expensive to make it profitable and make experimentation in that direction commercially interesting
It could become a thing one day. And for space industry manufacturing things in low orbit def makes sense. But for goods we use down on Earth? Just logistics of ship ping them back will probay eat any gain in production efficiency.
I’d say building a way into orbit that does not rely on chemical propulsion is way more important.