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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
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.
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.
RTFA. It shows them testing 3D printers in zero-gravity. No "luck" required, just sense.
If they want to use any of the resin methods, I hope gravity isn't as essential as it once seemed for these to work properly. What I've seen essentially hardened liquid resin, and seemed to rely on gravity to hold the part 'down' so it didn't drift around. A space model might fab the part with an anchor embedded into the bottom of the vat I suppose. Then all ya gotta do is empty the vat and pull the part.
But the subtractives essentially create a lot of loose waste. You may not fully appreciate how much easier it is to clean up on Earth, where gravity holds that shit down for you, that is what isn't airborne.On the ISS, everything floats about. The shavings will have to be contained even more carefully. Sounds like an entire module would be the place for the machine shop.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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.
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.
"PC Load Letter???"
Well .... almost exactly, but not quite, entirely unlike tea!
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
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.
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make install -not war