Tech
Factories of the future could float in space, reports say
Private companies providing cheap access to space could open up a whole new frontier in manufacturing, reports say.
Impressive as it may sound, it’s just a brick in the road toward an even bolder goal. Executives at nScrypt (the makers of the stem cell printer), Bioficial Organs (the ink provider), and Techshot (who thought up the heart experiment) are planning to print beating heart patches aboard the International Space Station by 2019.
The printer will fly up on a commercial rocket.
Private spaceflight companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX have been criticized as vanity projects for plutocrats surfing on taxpayer investments.
Read also: Apple employees set to move into $5bn office compared to a UFO & Pentagon
But the emergence of these companies has led to nose-diving prices for sending goods and equipment into space.
Today it costs roughly $5,000 to launch one kilogram of stuff, compared to $30,000 during the space shuttle era.
So a growing number of entrepreneurs and researchers are looking to use this relatively cheap access to harness the unique qualities of low Earth orbit—including its vacuum, microgravity, unlimited solar power, and extreme temperatures—for manufacturing.
Their experiments are already spurring innovations in medicine, technology, and materials science. Eventually, if it takes off, orbital fabrication could revolutionize the way we make things.
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