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How 3D Printing Could Help Keep the ISS In Orbit
Despite all the best intentions and meticulous overengineering, some of the equipment on spacecraft like the ISS inevitably breaks. An anonymous reader poses the question "Why carry out a very expensive launch into space to resupply the ISS, when astronauts could just manufacture replacement parts themselves?" Startup Made in Space is working on a space-oriented 3D printing system to make it easy to transmit the information needed to pop out complex shapes (as might be in delicate mechanical systems), but the founders are also talking about using 3D printers to jump-start construction if humans extend their presence from the Earth to other planets (or revisit the moon).
It's a pretty cool way to manufacture things when you need them - no question there. Will this device be able to use it's own excess waste after making something? Will we have to ship tons of materials up only to ditch some large percentage of waste?
I like the general concept here, but it isn't much more sustainable than sending up supplies.
you still need to send up the raw material.
now cool would be to make 3Dprinters work with materials refine-able from the surface of the moon or mars.
instead of sending a new probe every few years, send a "Maker"
it would have two parts.
gatherer and a factory(with the 3Dprinter).
transmit the new plans and away it goes.
just thinking and rambling
call it Thrambling
Let's get rid of the formalities here... and call it what we are all thinking it is... A REPLICATOR. (albeit a very basic one, but still...)
Unless of course there is a "royalty" fee attached to calling something that replicates items a REPLICATOR...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
There are two ways, it seems, to "3D-print" parts of equipment: either top-down, which is basically what 3D printers do, or bottom-up, which is how it would be done by nano-manufacturing. One wonders which method will win ?
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Sometimes is not enough that a part have certain (maybe complex or delicate) shape, but also the materials that make it. Until you have true replicators this could make quick plastic fixes, but won't be a generic solution for all kind of problems. And, of course, you need to lift whatever uses the printer to make the parts.
Are the materials that 3D printing is capable of using able to stand up to the tasks required of them?
It has been my understanding that most of the materials used are plastic, and not just any plastic will do, and
metal parts (if even possible) are simply not the same as cast and machined parts, either in strength or
precision.
Further this is done with powdered media, which will require advanced containment in a weightless environment, and a fair amount of power to operate the equipment. These machines aren't small enough yet to launch and install easily, so getting it there would be a problem.,
Further, the media plastic needs to be replaced often, sifted and cleaned/recycled.
In the final analysis, given the state of the art of 3d printing, I suspect it would be cheaper to launch each part as needed than it would be to launch a fresh batch of media to make each part.
Then there is the whole issue of the real value of the ISS, which has largely become a Russian playground with
no real mission, and the service life was planned to end in 2015, recently extended to 2020. The Russians want
to extend it to 2028, with nothing but a pie in the sky mission statement.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Good luck.
...a nice, hot cup of tea?
you need to take the material with you any ways? 3d Printers don't create something from nothing.
That said, ans a universal tool to hedge against running out of some unplanned for part, then it's a good idea.
Better if it can use material found at the locate we go to, saw Mars.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The ISS is super cool - the idea of a permanent human presence in near-space is awesome. However, it's kind of a colossal waste of money, in terms of hard science done per dollar spent. I don't think there's a single experiment done up there that couldn't be done autonomously. I don't think we're learning much more about living in space that hasn't already been explored in Skylab or Mir.
If the point of the ISS is to inspire people, then the mission should have been more inspiring, instead of parking people in orbit for a while, which has already been done. How about sending components to the moon to build an orbital spaceyard? Launching deep-space missions from the moon would be much more efficient, if we can manage to get the machinery up there.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
1) The raw materials will weigh more than the finished product. Therefore, it's more expensive to launch a block of material than it is to launch the smaller, lighter component made from that material.
Not when a rocket launch costs, say, $50,000,000 whether you send one kilogram of parts or five tons of parts. If something has to be replaced tomorrow and you don't have a spare, then you can't wait until the next scheduled supply flight.
Hmm....'replicators' 'printing' components out of raw materials... I'm continually amazed by how many things from 'Star Trek' appear in everyday life...
Nothing to see here but us trolls...move along...
Printing 3D in metals has been around for a long time - it's just more expensive then printing in plasic.
Materialise makes a 3D printer that can print titanium hip replacements. Because it can print in 3D it can replicate the structure of bones (i.e. lots of small holes) - So you get something lighter without diminishing strength.
Or maybe that is the wrong sci-fi metaphor, you were thinking Hitchhiker's Guide? But if I remember, the Star Trek replicator made a cup of tea no problemo, but in the Hitchhiker's universe, making that nice, hot cup of tea blue-screened the ship's computer and got them into a spot of trouble?
I am trying to figure out whether this really solves the problem, or just moves it. The idea establishes the printer as being a fairly critical component. However in the event of failure, it would obviously not be available to generate spares. So, would an inventory of spares need to be generated on arrival, along with the requisite storage space, or would repairs rely on a delivery...
I realize that with the activities of the "for the children!" Groups out there that it is easy to presume everything is made of plastic these days, but this simply isn't true.
I would be willing to bet money that the vast majority of the innards of the ISS's superstructure is mostly made from 2024 or 7075 aluminum alloy, sprayed with hexavalent cromium primer.
Those are the two most commonly used aluminum alloys used in aerospace fabrication (I make prints citing them all the time at work), and for strength reasons these need to be heat treated in most circumstances after being formed or milled. A powder or paste based prototype printer just won't be able to produce these alloys, because the desired mechanical properties are a result of the metalurgical crystaline structures present in them after annealing and heat treating. That is, unless you want to ship a whole annealing oven and solution heat treatment system up there... (just so you know, that equipment isn't light.)
For composite materials, conventional heat shaped plastics are not common either. Usually a thermally cured resin material is used, such as with phenolic, or with carbon fiber composite. Doing thse in space would be a nightmare, since not only do you deal with a sticky, honey like liquid with toxic fumes, and the curing oven, you also need a vacuum bag machine and the finished product must be sanded, creating tiny (toxic) particles to float around the ventilation system.
I could see a prototype maching puking out ceramic paste parts prior to electric kilning, or plastic parts, but not the main structural parts made from alloy or composites.
I don't see the justification for the added launch expense of bringing one and its consumables along.
OR
you could...
manufacture parts on the moon, launch them into HEO without any fuel, assemble them and presto, new space station.
You're really not thinking this through. You could send a automated mission to mars, the moon, an asteroid and build a suitable habitat or a return vehicle with fuel all there. The mission could be launched a year before and have the destination all ready for inhabitants.
Ohh and btw, raw materials are never heavier than the finished products. Do you suggest that we somehow create more matter because of 3d printing?
The OP asks, "Why carry out a very expensive launch into space to resupply the ISS..." and the answer is pretty simple...
It's expensive to boost mass up into orbit. 3D printers take raw materials to print with. It's either send up the raw materials for the 3D printer to use, or send up the finished product, and pay for that launch. One could I suppose harvest space junk and asteroids and use that material, but that's not going to come cheap either.
Note, this is the truth of the ISS. Something like a base on Mars or the Moon, that's another story. Then it's worth figuring out how to utilize the local resources to feed a 3D printer.
What I didn't see was a good explanation of what the most common spare parts needed were? What exactly wears out? Can those broken pieces even be safely swapped out in the first place?
All that said, a CNC and a carefully picked set of raw chunks of aluminum should work. Sadly though, you'd have to wear out a lot of parts before you could justify the weight versus an equivalent weight of spare parts.
Lastly, given that the ISS is a manned station, it will see regular resupply every several months. I just don't see how any decently capable machine could really prove it's worth above and beyond the ability to toss spare parts onto the next resupply capsule.
"PC Load Letter???"
...presence from the Earth to other planets...
I suppose those other planets would be "the Mars" or "the Venus." I know, it's pedantic, but good grief I how I do hate that article when used in front of the name of our planet.
Not posting AC because, well, that would be cowardly despite the negative votes I will get, for both "off-topic" and "troll."
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
then you would note that even if they weren't in orbit of a planet or the Sun, there would still be gravity because everything with mass exerts a gravitational force. So there is gravity attracting the astronauts to the spacestation and to one another.
Note how this indulgent exposition added so little to the discussion. Hmmmm.
They don't need to use a powder. Some use filaments of plastic which are then melted and placed one tiny piece at a time. I'm sure gravity's a factor but there's some chance those could operate on just adhesive and cohesive forces. Some others use a liquid that hardens when hit with a UV light, again once the base of the object being printed is secure it might be possible to use that kind of printer without gravity.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Even if this project isn't necessary (or more useful than alternatives), it is totally worth doing for its own sake. The ISS should launch the era of space based manufacturing. That R&D will give us a huge jump into issues of microgravity and orbital mechanics, as well as 100% recycling/reuse of manufacturing byproducts. But it will also move forward both automated and remote manufacturing, especially of short-run items, that will improve manufacturing here on Earth.
It will give us a reason to exploit the nearby near-vacuum, and other local environment resources (eg. direct solar - in large quantities, but also causing very high temperature gradients in light/shade). Hard radiation and solar wind could help us make things that are impossible or prohibitively expensive on Earth. And it will also create demand for harvesting planetoid resources, whether the Moon, asteroids or other interplanetary matter. Which will bootstrap the further exploitation of the solar system.
Space-based manufacturing is how we should make the things that we disperse around the solar system, instead of launching the matter out of Earth's gravity well. We should be launching only what we need to make devices that make things. We should be able to transmit data and instructions for making new machines, some of which will take new data and instructions for making newer machines. Some of these machines can be very large - like other orbital stations, or other probes to launch. We should get started making things in orbit that can be landed on the Moon to start a base there, exploiting Lunar materials for further manufacturing.
And all of these improvements will bring better manufacturing back to Earth, even if only in lessons learned.
The ISS was worth doing for its own sake. What an achievement! It inspires the world. But now that it's largely completed, it should be our platform for projects that aren't an end in themselves. Moving humanity's tool use into effective use and occupation of the extraterrestrial neighborhood will be a vast dividend that will never stop paying us back.
--
make install -not war
It could even manufacture and assemble another 3D printer if the need be, what could go wrong?
Does anyone have questions about how the material gets from the jet to the product and sets in zero-gravity? Seems to me there would be some issues with a finished product if precision is key (and it happens to be paramount in most everything NASA does). Thoughts?
Nothing is really work unless you'd rather be doing something else. -James Barrie
The same way I can stick glue to a ceiling?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You would be pedantic. But if you plan on suspending the 3d printer from a tether and then swinging it you might be being pendantic.
We started building the ISS from existing orbiting stations in 1988. Of course parts started needing replacement immediately, since the base components were already in use for quite some time in one of the most extreme environments for machines (including launch). But of course after nearly a quarter century more replacement parts are needed.
These are all some of humanity's greatest successes. Even when there are failures, as is inevitable in any human work, fixing them under such difficult conditions is a great success.
--
make install -not war
You think that free fall is a magical land where laws of physics break down and nothing acts the same?
Sticky things stick. They might even stick better in low-g... you might be able to build outwards, not just up.
Imagine a 3D printer that can print itself! Wouldn't that be great?
But, why stop there? Let us say the 3D printer that can mine raw materials to be used as "ink"! But the source material could be different in different planets. So it would just carry the logic and print itself the proper attachment suitable for each environment. But the 3D printer itself is made up of the ink. So one 3D printer can "eat" another 3D printer and recycle the material. May be the printer can just print many different attachments to mine the raw materials. Some works, some wont. The successful printers will eat the dead end printers and make more printers. May the best printer win!
What if the 3D printer can be printed by a slightly less advance printer, recursively going down to something simple like self-replicating molecules or auto-catalysts? From there they will assemble themselves into larger and larger accretions of self replicating modules, eventually reaching really complex self replicating 3D printers. It will have generic tool handling appendages, sensing appendages, processing modules, recycling modules, etc. All the software needed to do it call can be packaged in any convenient molecule, like DNA or RNA.
OMG! We are the self replicating 3D printers launched from the planet Xudu in sector 8 in Delta Quadrant.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Getting the prototype running is trivial. Getting the prototype running to the point of producing space-grade materials --- that's something else altogether. This is something that is often forgotten. Space-grade materials are bloody expensive to make. They're not the parts you buy at your local DIY store. They have to survive extreme temperature variations and high radiation levels* for prolonged periods without any deformation or degradation. It's one thing to move the astronauts during a solar flare, but you can't play dodgems with the ISS, so all components have to be able to survive that as well. The pressure difference between the interior and exterior is not trivial, so any part that is critical in keeping the structure intact has to be able to cope with that.
*It's not enough for the material to seem intact. For temperature changes, the slightest imperfection will inevitably lead to fractures forming. Imperfections can mean incorrect ratios of isotopes of the same element or contaminant elements beyond acceptable thresholds. If something has to be ultra-pure, and a fair amount does, then you're talking an upper limit of 0.00001% undesirable contamination. For radiation, some molecules won't hold up to it. Yes, there's also the transmutation of elements from high energy particles - it's often used to determine how long minerals are exposed to the surface on Earth - but the ISS is unlikely to last long enough for this to even be noticeable. Contaminants, metal fatigue (remember DeHavilland's Comet aircraft?), even miniscule fractures (remember Challenger?) are all far more significant -- and extremely deadly -- problems in space.
There isn't any way to make a 3D printer (yet) that builds space-grade components. Simple as that. There may be, some day, but that day isn't today.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Tell me, how do you prevent the luneys from firing an under-weight projectile at your limited energy?
The fact is that if you build it you will have to hold it, it is a weapon.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Let's get a list from NASA of All the Things That Have Broken on the ISS (they like lists, I'm sure they have one), and ask, "How many of these things could we have made with a 3d printer?" I'm betting the answer is "not many".
When the plastic blade of a ventilator fan breaks, a 3d printer has got you covered. When a SDRAM chip gets fried or a tungsten heater filament inside a sealed vacuum tube melts, you're screwed.
I've had a hobby lathe at home for many years. Then one day I bought a milling machine. The first thing I found was that I couldn't walk barefoot at home anymore. The lathe creates chips that are like long spirals, the milling machine creates small, extremely sharp chips. You don't want one of those in your skin.
Now imagine those metal chips, smaller than grains of sand, flying around. Eye globes are much more sensitive than foot soles.
As I recall, Robert Heinlein's 1952 story, "The Rolling Stones," predicted 3-D printing, or its equivalent, when referring to a method of making repair parts for a rocket engine.
And a fair number of components on the ISS can do with a consumer-grade replacement for the 72-hours or so it will take NASA / the Russian space agency to get a supply vehicle up to them with the space-grade part. And I am fairly certain that a bunch of trained astronauts have the wherewithal to fabricate a reasonable analogue for any number of components on the ISS in the event of an emergency (and probably wouldn't mind having a few more options before they start cannibalizing parts of the station for the materials / components they need).
Bear in mind that astronauts do tend to use regular laptops / cameras for a lot of their actual work in space.
I am John Hurt.
I must have missed that part of the movie.
I am John Hurt.
They'll just claim it's a matter of national interest, and the whole intellectual property thing will be swept under the rug.
One of the naughties of the United States patent-process is that while it typically grants you protection for, say, 20 years (utility type), the United States reserves the right to break that protection if you have something they really want. In short, if you find the cure for HIV or Cancer, patent it, and the United States decides that its in their interest to break your patent, they can and will.
Probably a major reason that no one is truly interested in finding a cure for those diseases. They're too popular. If I found the cure tomorrow, and charge $100 per dose (a single dose being all that's required), by the end of the week there would be a national outcry of me getting rich off the plight of the poor. The US government would sweep in, pooh-pooh me about being a greedy bastard, while talking about setting a 'fair price,' making vain speeches to the populace in an attempt to garner more votes / good press, and BOOM, it's gone. And if not the US government, than any number of other governments out there, a number of whom have already done as much with other drugs / cures.
This is kind of the number reason, if I remember correctly, that the pharmaceutical industry isn't really looking for a cure. It's not a matter of selling treatments over cures, it's a matter of cures being purloined.
I am John Hurt.
Actually, the lack of gravity could be an advantage.
Normally you have to provide supports for projected pieces, which then need to be cut away. And if you run the extruder too hot, you get slumping of the part, and not running the extruder hot limits the resolution and detail of the printing. In orbit, you won't have those problems, so you might be able to print parts you couldn't on Earth.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Try 1998. That's ninety eight. And no parts were used from "existing orbiting stations" (which would have been Mir.) Nothing up there is "a quarter century" old.
Did you read the article you linked to?
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
I suppose those other planets would be "the Mars" or "the Venus." I know, it's pedantic, but good grief I how I do hate that article when used in front of the name of our planet.
It's not pedantic, it's just stupid. Unlike every other planet, "earth" has secondary meanings. The definite article lets a speaker quickly assign significance to the name, "the Earth", not just "earth".
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Also a ton of those examples were talking about environments which are much harsher then LEO.
Most "space ready" components are actually more "launch ready". I mean yes space has certain dangers and conditions, but it's a pretty predictable, stable environment. Rocket launches are the hard part where subtle failures cause big explosions.