Cislunar Economy 101 — Part 5: Manufacturing Off-Planet
New to the series? You might want to start with Part 1!
This very short Part 5 of my Cislunar Economy series completes the discussion on the production activities that we started with Part 4. We know what the markets for mining are, so let’s examine the various uses for all those metals we’re getting from the Moon and asteroids.
Industrialization 4.0
The idea, of course, is on-orbit manufacturing, or more generally, off-Earth manufacturing. There are many reasons (some good, some less so) to manufacture things off-planet. One that might appeal your environmentalist friends (and maybe convince them to support space development) is that we should move industry off-planet so that we can better preserve Earth’s biosphere, as proposed by Jeff Bezos (Amazon, Blue Origin). That’s a pretty good sell, and definitely a way to get support from people outside the space industry. However, let’s take a purely economic approach and see what the benefits of manufacturing outside Earth’s gravity well are.
First off, you avoid launch. Even if exciting, space launches suck. To get to space, your very sensitive payload needs to survive acceleration several times that of Earth’s gravity (g), constant shaking, and horrible noise, among other things. It must also fit within the limited space of a rocket fairing. All this imposes a number of requirements and constraints on a satellite that only apply for the first 9 minutes of its life, after which it will sit on microgravity, with no wind to make it vibrate, and with accelerations of a fraction of a g to keep it in place. Also, if something goes wrong, rockets have a tendency to explode and leave nothing behind (that’s also exciting, but not so much for the satellite owner). If you can avoid launch altogether, not only do you get easier spacecraft to manufacture, you also reduce the risk of losing it because of the rocket, and can build new structures that wouldn’t fit within a fairing or withstand launch.
Cost of launch is also the most significant limiter we have today for our space activities. At a minimum of about $1700/kg launched to low Earth orbit (with Falcon Heavy), every piece of hardware we can avoid launching will bring some interesting cost reductions for space activities. This may enable (or at least support) certain markets, such as repair and retrofit of on-orbit assets.
Finally, on-orbit manufacturing is a key element in the asteroid mining value chain. As we saw in Part 2, it doesn’t make much sense to bring any of the resources we get from asteroid mining to Earth. We need then to use them in space, so on-orbit manufacturing capabilities are a necessity for asteroid mining to work outside propellant production.
In contrast to all the benefits, the main, and only, drawback is that we have no infrastructure in space to manufacture anything (except the 3D printer from Made in Space). We also aren’t sure how to manufacture most things (again, Made in Space working on it). However, that’s not so much a drawback as it is a simple issue of having to learn how to do a new thing. But what should we build anyway?
Baby Steps
Given the lack of infrastructure, you must start small and build from there. Whatever piece you build will have to fit within your current space station if you want direct human supervision, so it’s going to be small. If you want to build outside the station, you need to take into account the lack of technology or infrastructure, so the piece will be simple.
Made in Space is already making some stuff, such as 3D-printing spare parts for use at ISS. However, they launch their materials from Earth, and then shape them in space. In a developed Cislunar Economy, we won’t be launching much from Earth for manufacturing purposes, instead using materials derived from mining in space.
Since we’ll be mining mostly structural metals (remember Part 2), we can start doing trusses, simple mechanisms such as gimbals, and reaction wheels or antennas. These can be employed for repair or retrofit of orbiting satellites and stations (there might be early business cases for this), or you can add them in orbit to new satellites before deploying them (on-orbit integration), thus saving launch mass.
You can also start going big with very simple structures, like the Archinaut project from Made in Space plans to do. Essentially, you can start making long structures by extruding metal in free space, and then adding them to your Earth-made station or satellite modules.
The next step would be using the semiconductors we can get from asteroids, and deploying techniques more complex than extrusion. Making solar panels in space is an obvious step. They are hard to fold inside a fairing, requiring fancy deployment mechanisms to achieve large collecting areas. Also, ageing satellites usually start having power problems due to degradation of the solar panels before they have fuel problems.
At the same time as solar panels, you should also start making more complex metal components such as fuel tanks (with all the plumbing), thermal radiators, and thrusters. Once you reach this stage, you only have to send from Earth electronic components and whatever parts that require materials not available from asteroids, such as plastics. You can then assemble full spacecraft in orbit, combining Earth-made with space-made (both on orbit and on the Moon) components.
This stage will likely take decades. It requires a developed asteroid mining value chain, cislunar stations acting as dry docks, and a transportation infrastructure to bring all the pieces together. The first steps though, are already almost with us. Made in Space is taking strides forward to demonstrating all the capabilities needed for manufacturing simple components and large structures in orbit, providing potential first customers for our asteroid miners.
The Endgame
The question remaining is: how will everything look in the end? Will we reach the point in which nothing is made on Earth and Bezos’ dream of moving the entire heavy industry to space is realized? Well, eventually, as in, in a couple centuries maybe. We don’t have enough knowledge about microgravity manufacturing to make a decision about that. Also, in such long terms, Mars comes into play as a developed planet, and asteroid miners will most likely be exploiting the asteroid belt.
We’ll have most elements from the periodic table available in space, and launching anything else from Mars is very easy (Mars’ gravity is weak compared to Earth’s). Maybe any component that requires gravity to be built can be constructed on Mars, where gas emissions to the atmosphere would help terraforming, freeing Earth from heavy industry.
On the other hand, Earth will require an economy of its own, people will need something to do, and some industries will stay here. Then again, a little over a century ago everyone was wondering what everyone would do once machines take over agriculture, and we solved that problem (we’re asking a similar question now with automation).
Or maybe AI takes over and end of story.
In any case, that should not worry us in this series, since we are talking about a near-future Cislunar Economy, and it’s essentially activities in the first two stages that will concern us to inform current business decisions.
With this, we now know all about the production activities in the Cislunar Economy (outside Moon-dedicated manufacturing). Next, we’ll take a look at the transportation network that will support all of it.
Enjoyed the article? Then you may like the rest of the articles in the Cislunar Economy Series.
