Making It in Space
Chapter 7 (P2): Red Moon Rising Serialization
I am sharing insights from my new book, with Peter Navarro, Red Moon Rising: How America Will Beat China on the Final Frontier on this Substack. Today, I’m offering you a sneak peek into the chapter on the amazing promise of space resources. You can find the full book on Amazon.
Making it in Space
Developing space not only offers us the chance to extract resources without fouling our precious planet but also promises to be the factory floor of the future. Space provides us with a unique environment that offers some advantages over Earth. First among these is the lack of gravity. Why is the zero-g world a good place to make things? Picture a pharmaceutical factory on Earth. What do you see? A great deal of the floor space will be filled with mixing vats and chemical reactors that require rotation, stirring, vibration, or other systems to keep those medical molecules thoroughly mixed in solution so that the correct lifesaving compounds can be formed. This mixing dilemma is primarily an artifact of gravity. Inside Earth’s “gravity well,” everything is being pulled down with a constant acceleration of one g. Heavier atoms and molecules fall “out of solution” and accumulate on the bottom of vats while the lighter elements float to the top.
Anytime you open a can of paint, you’ll see that effect and must either shake the can vigorously or get out your stir stick to remedy it. In the “microgravity” environment of a space station, your buttercup yellow enamel or new chemotherapy drug will stay perfectly mixed.
The rising of warmer molecules to the surface of liquids also creates undesirable imperfections in solidifying materials. Gravity is so annoying to chemistry that there are molecules, compounds, and materials that cannot form at all in our one-g environment but that could be produced in microgravity. Some of these may have extraordinarily valuable properties. There are drugs and molecules in this category that medical researchers are very interested in. These include potentially revolutionary treatments for cancer.113 R & D conducted in zero gravity also promises potential breakthroughs for Alzheimer’s and other deadly conditions.
The improved uniformity of crystal growth in space also promises improved drug delivery and storage. This could change a multi-hour infusion process into a simple shot. Crystallizing vaccines and proteins could extend the shelf life of drugs by years, saving billions of dollars at home as well as millions of lives in the developing world where refrigeration is unreliable. A 2019 survey by BMI/Fitch Group reported that 60 percent of pharmaceutical company executives believed that the space economy would significantly impact their sector in the coming decades.
Perfect formation of crystal and glass in microgravity offers improvements in laser and fiber-optic technologies. Perfect crystals can increase the performance of high-powered lasers used in everything from fusion power systems to weapons. These crystals may be worth millions of dollars per kilogram. A special type of optical fiber called “ZBLAN” promises to revolutionize data transmission by allowing multispectral lasers on a single cable. Making ZBLAN on Earth is difficult because gravity induces the formation of bubble and crystal structures that impede the transmission of light signals. NASA has been helping private companies, like Flawless Photonics, test the production of ZBLAN cable in microgravity on the ISS. This cable can sell for hundreds of dollars per meter, and there is a market for thousands of kilometers of ZBLAN cables, including trans-oceanic runs.
Crystals are also the basis for solar panels as well as the semiconductors in integrated circuits and microprocessors. Crystals grow more perfectly without gravity distorting them. Additionally, Stanford University and others are seeking to improve the quality of terrestrially produced semiconductor crystals by reheating them and allowing them to reform more perfectly in microgravity, a process called “annealing.” Better crystal formation promises to significantly increase the performance of the highest-end computer chips.
Further, if you think about it, a “chip” is defined by its flatness. Semiconductors are 2D artifacts primarily because they are made under gravity. Connecting logic gates and circuits on these flat surfaces with the shortest path is a frustrating design challenge. Efforts are underway to make multilayered chips, but the interconnections on those are difficult. A truly three-dimensional semiconductor, in the form of a layered cube or even a sphere, that allowed for the shortest and simplest interconnections to all the gates could dramatically revolutionize computing. Researchers at universities and private companies are working with NASA on technologies to take semiconductors to the next level via in-space manufacturing. Three-dimensional printing of semiconductors in space could give a needed extension to Moore’s Law, the observation by Intel cofounder Gordon Moore, that the number of transistors on a chip will double every couple of years.
Compounds and crystals aren’t the only materials that can be optimized in space. Metallic alloys can be more perfectly formed when lighter and heavier elements can be perfectly mixed. Not only that, but entirely new classes of materials like metallic glass and metal foams have been formed in the absence of gravity. The European Space Agency notes that experiments on the ISS show that “aluminum foam is as strong as pure metal but much lighter” and that microgravity research “can help in the construction of lightweight and sturdy aerospace structures and new shielding systems for diagnostic radiology equipment in hospitals.”122 It may also be possible to make high-temperature superconductors and more powerful magnets in space. By removing the need for expensive and difficult-to-handle liquid helium cooling, high-temperature superconductor systems could revolutionize research into nuclear fusion and even medical imaging.
Greg Autry, is the Associate Provost for Space Commercialization and Strategy at the University of Central Florida. He is also a Visiting Professor in the Institute for Security Science and Technology at Imperial College London. Dr. Autry served on the 2016 Presidential Transition Team at NASA. President Trump appointed him White House Liaison at NASA in 2017 and nominated to be NASA’s Chief Financial Officer in 2020. He chaired the Safety Working group for the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee at the FAA.
Follow Greg on X @GregWAutry.