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).

Comments

Materials

[ieatcookies]

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?

Re:Materials

[GameboyRMH]

With 3D printing there is little to no waste. That's why it's called additive manufacturing.

The bigger issue is finishing, most 3D printed parts will need some. I'm sure they don't want metal or plastic filings floating around in the ISS, so that could be tricky.

Idea

[phrostie]

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

Re:Idea

[Kn45h3r]

The main advantage would be to reduce the amount of spare parts they need to keep on hand in case they need them in a hurry. Additionally broken parts could possibly be melted down and reused.

Launching Space Manufacturing

[Doc Ruby]

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.