SpaceX Launches Supplies to ISS, Including Its First 3D Printer

A "flawless" launch early Sunday from Cape Canaveral has sent a load of supplies on its way to the International Space Station aboard a Falcon 9-lofted SpaceX Dragon capsule. Food, care packages and provisions for NASA's astronauts make up more than a third of the cargo onboard Dragon. But the spacecraft also has experiments and equipment that will eventually help scientists complete 255 research projects in total, according to NASA. In Dragon's trunk, there's an instrument dubbed RapidScat, which will be installed outside the space station to measure the speed and direction of ocean winds on Earth. Among the commercially funded experiments onboard Dragon is a materials-science test from the sports company Cobra Puma Golf designed to build a stronger golf club. Dragon is also hauling the first space-grade 3D printer, built by Made in Space, which will test whether the on-the-spot manufacturing technology is viable without gravity.

Comments

Only 255 projects?

[Whiternoise]

Someone needs to update from 8-bit mission plans!

Some details about the 3D printer

[mrxak]

http://www.space.com/27211-made-in-space-3d-printer.html/

It's ABS, and quite small. It's more for testing than anything else, but they say they intend to print functional items rather than just toys.

Re:Some details about the 3D printer

[CrimsonAvenger]

3D printing is one of those things that will be pretty much essential for successful manned missions farther away than the moon.

Being unable to fix broken things will be fatal if the nearest spare parts are nine months away, and a 3D printer or two can, conceivably, replace a great many individual spare parts....

Re:Some details about the 3D printer

[mrxak]

I am not an atheist, just practical. While I personally believe we'll get our acts together and get the technology to prevent most major extinction events before they happen (such as large asteroids, and even climate change), eventually our sun will expand and burn away all life on Earth. I see no reason why life on Earth should just accept its extinction lying down. There won't be any humans around, as we would recognize humans, but whatever our descendants look like, I'd like to hope they've gotten off the planet long before that happens, and brought along plenty of other Earthlings with them.

This century, we have the ability to get at least some of our eggs out of this one basket. Over the coming millennium, I expect we will be able to travel to other solar systems in generational ships. I happen to believe life is sacred. Shouldn't we try to preserve it for as long as we can?

Re:So we just gave all this money

[TWX]

In Boeing's defense, it's b-o-e-i-n-g, not 'boing'. A trampoline was never being considered.

Re:oh wow

[ArcadeMan]

The gravity helps feed the raw materials through a hopper? You think 3D printers use plastic pellets?

Have you ever seen a 3D printer in action in the last few years? They use plastic filament and can print upside-down without any problems. The fumes can probably be eliminated by using an enclosed printing space with a filtered exhaust, and the toxicity of the fumes lowered by using PLA instead of ABS.

Re:oh wow

[MightyYar]

I'd expect that from eight year olds, not adults.

Perhaps the problem is that you've lost hold of what makes 8-year-olds so delightful? There was a cynical curmudgeon about just about every technological advance throughout human history, and despite that flight is routine and inexpensive. Horseless carriages clog the roads. Skyscrapers crown cities. Nuclear reactors pump out gigawatts of electricity. Ships the size of skyscrapers ply the seas carrying stuff built by robots. We carry some significant percentage of all human knowledge in our pockets. At every step, there were doubters. You are that guy now.

If you want to manufacture stuff in space, you can't just jump right to space foundries and space smelters. Baby steps.

Re:oh wow

[TWX]

Yes, melting plastic in a closed environment. Brilliant. Instead of planning for their little hobby-jump in Low Earth Orbit, let's bring a cranky, tiny toy to make coat hangers... (in free-fall LOL). I just love the armchair engineers and programmers here going on about the 3D printer will be this tool to help colonize the universe..

I never said that it would help colonize the universe.

I expect that it'll be useful when that plastic tab on that rocker switch that's used all of the time breaks off, so they an print themselves a replacement instead of waiting weeks or months for a resupply mission to bring them one, or when an astronaut realizes that a particular control stick or other device is causing skin abrasions, so they could design and print a different one that doesn't cause sores, or any of a whole set of times when a spaceman needs some small, insignificant-on-earth part that is literally worth its weight in gold because they just don't have access to it.

I could even see circumstances in an Apollo-Thirteen kind of accident where engineers at NASA could come up with a fix that's safer and more reliable than duct-taping some plastic sheeting to a bulkhead because the tech to manufacture a few parts exists with those that need those parts.

Re:It's called redundancy

[Enigma2175]

"Horses can make other horses. That's a trick that tractor's haven't figured out yet."

        -- Heinlein

I doubt Heinlein put an apostrophe in tractors.