this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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What year do you think we'll get the first product mined and manufacturered in space? And how about the first space grown food sold commercially?
I would guess 2040 and 2050 respectively, we'll have the automation tools to get started by 2030 with government science projects then a decade for it to mature into something a company can try to create a market with, probably something that can only be made in low gravity like solve form of novelty such as space glass spheres or a special use material.
I think food will be fast behind because people will pay a lot for it and there's already a lot of research into it for use in space based living facilities.
AstroForge thinks they can close the business case for asteroid mining. Their concept is to launch mining satellites to near-Earth M-type asteroids to mine platinum group metals. These would go on 2 year missions to bring back $100 million+ in metal at a time. With launch and satellite costs dropping, it might just work. Their forge demo sat has been struggling but moving forward. Their asteroid flyby demo sat should launch later this year.
Redwire 3d printed a meniscus in space last year. That'll take awhile to get worthwhile scale and cost, but it's another interesting avenue.
Varda hit regulatory trouble, but their orbital drug manufacturing demo did its job.
Oh I had totally missed the 3d printing in space that's really cool, just watching their video about it and wow is it painful with the marvel tie ins and stuff but looks very cool
Seems like the ability to control temperature dissipation without convection could be really useful especially with metals like platinum, might be even sooner that it's commercialised at scale if they can gather raw platinum and make high quality parts especially something like premium bike or boat parts, the corrosion resistance would make it perfect for tidal generation components too.
That could be a possible first strong business, if the space platinum to earth pipeline is already in progress then it should be relatively cheap to divert some for manufacturing then parachuting them in splash down zones would make sense for tidal generator parts.
Of course with progress on fusion it's possible there won't be a huge market for reliable cheap energy but we'll see. I suspect the first thing made will be jewelry that's sold in small amounts for absurd prices.
There may be some manufacturing processes that need microgravity or a good vacuum and could be be profitable, but I think you are being much too optimistic.
Maybe, it's so hard to guess which way things will go. I would place a safe bet though that a rich person will buy a bit of jewelry or a watch that was made in space from space mined metals within in the next ten years.
The problem is still rocket launches are expensive and complicated. But if maybe we can get orbital tethers working then we may be okay.
I don't think this is true anymore. The cost of a rideshare with SpaceX is super accessible. Companies can launch for <$1 million. This has been huge for a lot of companies trying to launch a proof of concept or one-off, and even for some operational constellations.