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points by solyin 3 days ago | 0 comments

What if zero g is the best or only place to manufacture something? Varda grows crystals in space to make medicine that works better than when grown in a gravity well.

[–] Yizahi 2 days ago

That is a valid argument but so far I'm not aware of anyone doing the complete calculation of what that could entail and which exact medicine could be cost efficient to manufacture like that.

But if that would be a real market case, then Elon's solution is actually the optimal one, and very similar to the possible approach which more knowledgeable space analysts said for years. Basically it is super pointless for humans now to have big manned space stations for any economical purposes. We should build them of course, but they will be a net loss for centuries. If any space research or space manufacturing would be required by the market, then one-off space missions are the only rational way to do it cheaply. Something like the platform showcased here, or something bigger, like a converted Dragon/Cygnus/etc. ship into a mini lab. Commercial Space Stations is a bunk program, specifically in the word "Commercial".

[–] etiennebausson 2 days ago

I disagree.

Commercial manufacturing in space can be economically viable, as long as most of the components do not come from Earth.

If you build titanium stations in space, but all your titanium come from the moon, the price structure is wildly different. The price of shipping material is the price of building a railgun on the moon.

Absolutely not cheap,but the operating cost afterward is very low. And since the moon is geolocked, you can target any lagrange point with very good precision.

There will still be a need for components coming from earth, but the moon should be able to send all the material for structural parts (titanium), and also solar panels.

[–] rbanffy 2 days ago

> The price of shipping material is the price of building a railgun on the moon.

This would be very unfortunate. Luckily, we only need to build the rail gun (and the mining/refining facilities) once. After that, the cost is marginal.

[–] Yizahi 1 day ago

I wouldn't call a maintenance and ops for a large energy intensive Lunar structure "marginal". The dust is going to be a major pain permanently. Powering the system will be a pain, cooling both railgun and power generation for it will be an incredible feat of engineering. And that's just the initial hurdles of what I suspect would be a thick book list just the problems.

PS: I would also leave it to everyone to evaluate how many seconds would this railgun keep existing until the other superpower will blow it up to pieces, "just in case". Question works the same for any owner and any opponent pairing.

[–] rbanffy 1 day ago

The blowing up part is very valid - humanity will need to grow up before we can make such a thing, but the rest stays - once it’s built, we only need to maintain it, and we can design for low maintenance.