So far, the public faces of the new space race have been billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson joyriding around in rockets, having maybe the most expensive midlife crises ever. But behind the scenes, big tech is thinking more seriously about the first non-Earth production lines. For some startups, the most pressing questions in manufacturing right now are: how do you build computer parts, harvest stem cells or produce pharmaceuticals while in space? A group of founders say it’s already happening, at least at the research level. Nasa has given a $2m grant to scientists who want to see if zero-gravity conditions can help produce new stem cell and gene therapies. The defense company Northrop Grumman partnered with a startup that aims to produce semiconductors in space. By the end of this decade, one expert says, we’ll be using items that contain some element that was built off of Earth. Why go through the trouble of “off-planet manufacturing”? Jeff Bezos told CBS’s Gayle King that heavy manufacturing and air-polluting industries could operate away from Earth. “This sounds fantastical … but it will happen,” Bezos said. Advocates say that certain conditions in space, including the lack of gravity, low temperatures and near-perfect vacuum, mean that certain ingredients, such as crystals, can be made at a better quality than on land. “Space is a much better place to do almost any industrial process,” said Joshua Western, CEO of Space Forge, an in-space technology manufacturer based in Wales. “We live on a planet where we’re weighed down by gravity. We made ovens, refrigerators and the vacuum pump to help manufacture products on earth, but if you go to space, you get those benefits for free.”
Full story : Building in zero gravity: the race to create factories in space.
