Time to start designing orbiting production facilities?
Time to start designing orbiting production facilities?
(OP)
So like the title says, with all the new proposed missions for orbiting launch facilities, lunar bases, and expansions for ISS, do you think it is high time we start designing production facilities for use in orbit? This would negate the cost of bringing all the materials needed for these things from earth. This may also reduce the power required to machine and work metals, as the power needed to move them around is reduced due to a smaller gravitational force acting on the materals. I for one, believe that an in orbit production facility receiving materials from drones that are mining asteroids would be of greater benefit to space exploration than a lunar base. Discuss





RE: Time to start designing orbiting production facilities?
TTFN
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RE: Time to start designing orbiting production facilities?
i think there are huge advantages to creating structures remotely, and it will take a lot of time to recoop the capital investment (lifting the factory).
i imagine that for the lunar base they are already planning production of O2 (and H2O ?) from local materials (as well as recycling). manufacturing building materials is probably quite a ways down the list (unless its creatice ways of using soil materials, to make a pressure shell??).
RE: Time to start designing orbiting production facilities?
You're proposing unmanned space craft to mine asteroids and transport the raw ore back to an orbiting facility. This in itself is highly challenging. You have to find an asteroid, confirm it has usefull accessible ore, extract the ore, transport the ore before you're even at the start point.
You then need some kind of foundary in your orbiting facility which will require massive amounts of energy.
Then you need machining & fabrication facilities...
KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...
RE: Time to start designing orbiting production facilities?
RE: Time to start designing orbiting production facilities?
RE: Time to start designing orbiting production facilities?
RE: Time to start designing orbiting production facilities?
Even though the ISS took nearly 20 years to design, it went through something like 4 major design iterations, but in each iteration, the precise design solution was ostensibly known. At this time, none of the critical design solutions are known, since we have no idea how to deal with the propulsion. How are we going to get the major infrastructure into orbit? Building the ISS required some serious machinery to do just the metal forming and shaping, ignoring the smelting, etc.
Until we have solid solution with dealing with moving crap around the solar system without getting fuel from Earth, we don't have a viable design concept. Until we have a approach to get the large fixtures and machinery needed to do the basic forming and shaping of structures, we don't have a viable design concept.
TTFN
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RE: Time to start designing orbiting production facilities?
KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...
RE: Time to start designing orbiting production facilities?
fusion powerplant
space elevator
(world peace is too much to hope for)
RE: Time to start designing orbiting production facilities?
Some kind of hybrid between what scaled composites did with White Knight/Space ship one and how the ASAT was launched by an f-15 in a zoom climb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT always seemed a good idea to me, but then I'm a dreamer.
KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...