Humanity's Biggest Machines Will Be Built in Space (popularmechanics.com)

When rockets can no longer hold oversize payloads, building in space might be the best way to go. Popular Mechanics: Headquartered in Mountain View, California, Made In Space is working to make that dream a reality. For the past few years, they've operated the Additive Manufacturing Facility, one of the only 3D printers in space. While the AMF sits comfortably aboard the International Space Station, Made In Space has plans to launch a new printer that would operate exclusively in the vacuum of space. Their prototype, called Archinaut, is scheduled to launch later this year. Future machines like Archinaut will be able to print nearly everything in orbit -- where there's no limit on size. "We can manufacture a structure that couldn't support its own mass if it were on Earth," says Made In Space CEO Andrew Rush. "The only practical limitation you have is how much material you're providing to the system." The first Archinaut prototype is mostly just a proof-of-concept and won't be constructing mile-wide satellites anytime soon. "First you crawl, then you walk, then you run," says Rush. "We'll start out with manufacturing space-optimized trusses and booms and reflectors to provide a supply capability that we can't currently achieve." But once this tech gets off the ground, it can be used to build structures as big as their owners want them.

Comments

Re:No gain until we get primary materia from space

[Immerman]

>we simply do not have the infrastructure in place to mine, purify and process minerals into finished metals in space

We may not need to. There's considerable evidence to suggest that there's plenty of asteroids out there that are nearly pure iron - as in all we have to do is chop it up, hammer it out, or melt it down and cast/print with it. In fact, there was some research recently suggesting that most, if not all, pre iron-age iron tools were made from meteoric iron. Unlike earth-based iron deposits that are all oxides and other iron-bearing minerals, iron meteorites were already fairly pure refined metal: oxidation is primarily an planetary phenomena - you mostly need liquid water or free oxygen to convert iron into non-metallic minerals, and you don't get those in vacuum.

Yeah, such rough-and-ready construction wouldn't benefit from modern advances in alloy technologies - but even cast, rolled, etc. iron is pretty useful stuff, especially in an environment where there's no gravity to resist. Similarly, there's lots of rocky asteroids out there that should provide copious raw filler material for "concretes" of various sorts, which have great potential as radiation shielding. Even if 10% of the material is some sort of vacuum-hardening epoxy bonding agent made on Earth, you can still get 90% of your material from space.