How 3D Printing Could Help Keep the ISS In Orbit 200
Despite all the best intentions and meticulous overengineering, some of the equipment on spacecraft like the ISS inevitably breaks. An anonymous reader poses the question "Why carry out a very expensive launch into space to resupply the ISS, when astronauts could just manufacture replacement parts themselves?" Startup Made in Space is working on a space-oriented 3D printing system to make it easy to transmit the information needed to pop out complex shapes (as might be in delicate mechanical systems), but the founders are also talking about using 3D printers to jump-start construction if humans extend their presence from the Earth to other planets (or revisit the moon).
Materials (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's get rid of the formalities here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's get rid of the formalities here... and call it what we are all thinking it is... A REPLICATOR. (albeit a very basic one, but still...)
Unless of course there is a "royalty" fee attached to calling something that replicates items a REPLICATOR...
Re:Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I like the general concept here, but it isn't much more sustainable than sending up supplies. you still need to send up the raw material.
Which could be included on the regularly-scheduled crew launches, like food. Having a stock of material on board means that if some part breaks, it's likely fixable without an extra unscheduled launch, which is currently a very expensive option.
OP needs to think this through a bit more... (Score:4, Insightful)
The OP asks, "Why carry out a very expensive launch into space to resupply the ISS..." and the answer is pretty simple...
It's expensive to boost mass up into orbit. 3D printers take raw materials to print with. It's either send up the raw materials for the 3D printer to use, or send up the finished product, and pay for that launch. One could I suppose harvest space junk and asteroids and use that material, but that's not going to come cheap either.
Note, this is the truth of the ISS. Something like a base on Mars or the Moon, that's another story. Then it's worth figuring out how to utilize the local resources to feed a 3D printer.
Launching Space Manufacturing (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if this project isn't necessary (or more useful than alternatives), it is totally worth doing for its own sake. The ISS should launch the era of space based manufacturing. That R&D will give us a huge jump into issues of microgravity and orbital mechanics, as well as 100% recycling/reuse of manufacturing byproducts. But it will also move forward both automated and remote manufacturing, especially of short-run items, that will improve manufacturing here on Earth.
It will give us a reason to exploit the nearby near-vacuum, and other local environment resources (eg. direct solar - in large quantities, but also causing very high temperature gradients in light/shade). Hard radiation and solar wind could help us make things that are impossible or prohibitively expensive on Earth. And it will also create demand for harvesting planetoid resources, whether the Moon, asteroids or other interplanetary matter. Which will bootstrap the further exploitation of the solar system.
Space-based manufacturing is how we should make the things that we disperse around the solar system, instead of launching the matter out of Earth's gravity well. We should be launching only what we need to make devices that make things. We should be able to transmit data and instructions for making new machines, some of which will take new data and instructions for making newer machines. Some of these machines can be very large - like other orbital stations, or other probes to launch. We should get started making things in orbit that can be landed on the Moon to start a base there, exploiting Lunar materials for further manufacturing.
And all of these improvements will bring better manufacturing back to Earth, even if only in lessons learned.
The ISS was worth doing for its own sake. What an achievement! It inspires the world. But now that it's largely completed, it should be our platform for projects that aren't an end in themselves. Moving humanity's tool use into effective use and occupation of the extraterrestrial neighborhood will be a vast dividend that will never stop paying us back.