Author Topic: 3-D Printing in Space  (Read 71774 times)

Offline Prober

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Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #40 on: 08/24/2016 04:08 pm »
Do we have enough surplus energy for this manufacturing proposed?
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Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #41 on: 08/25/2016 05:34 pm »
Do we have enough surplus energy for this manufacturing proposed?
The energy requirement looks to be the heating of the source material and then the cooling of the fiber. So to produce the amounts at the rates being discussed by MIS, it should not take much power in a % value of that available on ISS or even on a more power constrained BA330 module. These are small NAROO (no assembly required on orbit) rack mount boxes that are doing the work not some large built up system. To produce from 6 to 14 km of fiber a 2 kg block of source material is what is being brought to a melting point. It takes ~20Mj to melt the 2 kg block and that is equivelent to just ~6 kwh. Meaning to also cool it would require 12kwh to produce the entire fiber from the source block. If the unit only pulls 200w it would take ~60hours (2 1/2 days) to produce the complete fiber.

So the amount of power used by these boxes is almost trivial to the other power requirements of the ISS or other space-station such as a BA330.

A BTW that 6km of fiber at $300/m let alone the $3000/m price is worth $1.8M. At $3,000/m it is worth $18M.
« Last Edit: 08/25/2016 05:38 pm by oldAtlas_Eguy »

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #42 on: 09/23/2016 04:27 pm »

http://www.spacedaily.com/m/reports/UK_Ministry_Of_Defence_increases_investment_in_Magna_Parva_in_space_manufacturing_technology_999.html

Current pre-manufactured structures (antennae, solar arrays, deployment booms) designed to go into space are high in mass and volume, and have specific launch environment requirements. By manufacturing in space, many of these requirements are eliminated, offering an order of magnitude capability increase over current state of the art systems. Based on a deployed length to packed volume ratio of greater than 1000:1, the Magna Parva market disruptive technology can offer a new and unexplored utility from even small satellites.

Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #43 on: 12/28/2016 06:20 pm »
New related story that suggests that to support expanded in-space manufacturing the down-mass capabilities (to get the manufactured goods to the largest market) will need to expand greatly.

http://spacenews.com/space-manufacturing-and-the-last-mile/

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #44 on: 01/24/2017 08:47 am »
Made in Space partnership with Axiom.

https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/made-space-explain-3d-printing-advancing-space-industry-103818/

Looks like 3D printing in space may actually be a via business.

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #45 on: 04/22/2017 02:22 pm »
Made In Space are keeping busy with these 3 proposals.

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2017/04/21/space-selected-nasa-small-business-awards/

The one printing high quality optical devices has highest probably of being real money spinner.
« Last Edit: 04/22/2017 02:22 pm by TrevorMonty »

Online FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #46 on: 05/06/2017 02:38 pm »
Quote
Made In Space: Manufacturing fiber optic cable could become the first space-based industry

MAY 4, 2017 BY KENDRA R CHAMBERLAIN

https://thedownlink.co/2017/05/04/made-in-space-manufacturing-fiber-optic-cable-could-become-the-first-space-based-industry/

Includes:

Quote
Made In Space has built what it calls a “miniature fiber-pulling machine” that’s about the size of a microwave oven, which will be flown to the International Space Station (ISS) later this summer on SpaceX’s Dragon.

So CRS 12 I assume?

Offline rberry

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Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #47 on: 05/06/2017 04:33 pm »
Quote
Made In Space: Manufacturing fiber optic cable could become the first space-based industry

MAY 4, 2017 BY KENDRA R CHAMBERLAIN

https://thedownlink.co/2017/05/04/made-in-space-manufacturing-fiber-optic-cable-could-become-the-first-space-based-industry/

Includes:

Quote
Made In Space has built what it calls a “miniature fiber-pulling machine” that’s about the size of a microwave oven, which will be flown to the International Space Station (ISS) later this summer on SpaceX’s Dragon.

So CRS 12 I assume?

Yes.

http://www.spacestationresearch.com/research-on-station/projects/?wpv_view_count=3152-TCPID1536&wpv_post_search=OFPIM&project-status%5B%5D=&wpv-category=0&project-location-state%5B%5D=&wpv_filter_submit=Search
-Ryan

Offline deruch

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Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #48 on: 05/11/2017 07:47 pm »
Noticed this in the Expedition 51 thread, from an ISS update dated April 28th:

Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) Shield Installation:  The crew ingressed the BEAM and installed a Radiation Environment Monitor (REM) shield onto the REM sensor. This shield is a 1.1 mm thick component produced by the 3D printer on the ISS.  BEAM is an experimental expandable module attached to the ISS.  Expandable habitats greatly decrease the amount of transport volume required for future space missions. These “expandables” weigh less and take up less room on a rocket than a traditional module while allowing additional space for living and working. They also provide protection from solar and cosmic radiation, space debris, and other contaminants. Crews traveling to the moon, Mars, asteroids, or other destinations could possibly use them as habitable structures.
This was the first time that I had heard of the ISS crew printing a part to use on station instead of as a comparison to a ground-made part.  Are others aware of other examples?
Shouldn't reality posts be in "Advanced concepts"?  --Nomadd

Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #49 on: 05/13/2017 02:11 am »
In-Space industrialization is just a small step away.

For large amounts a DragonLab dedicated flight could produce quite a lot of fiber per flight. I believe the data was that 1 kg of source equates to 3km of fiber. So for 1 mt of fiber manufactured in a 2mt plant would produce 3,000,000 meters of fiber. At a sale price of $100/meter (that is less than the current price for the worst quality fiber) the revenue would be $300M. The cost of the flight of both the Dragon2 and F9 (both of which are reused) at about $100M/flight results in $200M profit. Because of the enormous amount of fiber this represents is why I used just $100/m for this supper quality fiber instead of its value when very little of it is available of $3,000/m.

If I had used the $3,000/m the revenue from a single flight would be $3B!!!!!!!!!!!!

So there is a lot of room for high costs of space travel.

With a Manned station the Dragons would transport just source and bring back finished fiber rolls ~3mt of fiber for support of prices as low as $30/M for $270M in revenue /flight. Enough to pay for not only the supply flights but for a pair of astronauts and the rental of a space station if 12 Dragon fiber delivery flights per year were made to the factory resulting in 108,000km of fiber produced per year at $30/m is $3.24B  in fiber. If all space launch costs are $2B then profit /yr would be $1.2B.

This could literally catapult a small company into a big player.


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Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #50 on: 05/23/2017 08:26 pm »
How much energy is needed in order to run the fiber making machine?

Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #51 on: 05/26/2017 07:53 pm »
How much energy is needed in order to run the fiber making machine?
Quote from one of my previous posts which answered this question:
Do we have enough surplus energy for this manufacturing proposed?
The energy requirement looks to be the heating of the source material and then the cooling of the fiber. So to produce the amounts at the rates being discussed by MIS, it should not take much power in a % value of that available on ISS or even on a more power constrained BA330 module. These are small NAROO (no assembly required on orbit) rack mount boxes that are doing the work not some large built up system. To produce from 6 to 14 km of fiber a 2 kg block of source material is what is being brought to a melting point. It takes ~20Mj to melt the 2 kg block and that is equivelent to just ~6 kwh. Meaning to also cool it would require 12kwh to produce the entire fiber from the source block. If the unit only pulls 200w it would take ~60hours (2 1/2 days) to produce the complete fiber.

So the amount of power used by these boxes is almost trivial to the other power requirements of the ISS or other space-station such as a BA330.

A BTW that 6km of fiber at $300/m let alone the $3000/m price is worth $1.8M. At $3,000/m it is worth $18M.

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Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #52 on: 05/27/2017 02:17 am »
Thanks for your answer. So this seems very viable and truly a way to kickstart a space economy.

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #53 on: 06/06/2017 12:53 am »


http://spaceangels.com/post/beam-celebrates-birthday-receives-3d-printed-radiation-shielding

Excellent article from Space Angels with lots of interesting links.

Sent from my SM-G570Y using Tapatalk


Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #54 on: 06/07/2017 02:23 pm »


http://spaceangels.com/post/beam-celebrates-birthday-receives-3d-printed-radiation-shielding

Excellent article from Space Angels with lots of interesting links.

Sent from my SM-G570Y using Tapatalk
Thanks for pointing out the article.

It shows that the commercial industry has started the first big step in being able to manufacture in space prototypes to test without having to build them and then launch them from Earth. This saves time and money for prototype/space innovations. As the ability to manufacture in space larger/more complex and even metallic objects the acceleration of space innovations will start to show some payback for commercial space industry in increased capabilities for much lower costs.

Offline deruch

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Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #55 on: 06/09/2017 08:17 am »
From Expedition 51 thread:
ISS Daily Summary Report – 5/29/2017

Posted on May 29, 2017 at 4:00 pm by HQ.

Manufacturing Device (MD): The Manufacturing Device failed to complete the 12 hour print of a Radiation Environment Monitoring shield on Friday and during a second attempt yesterday. The REM shield was to be installed in the BEAM during ingress later this week. The Made-In-Space team is assessing the anomaly.  The MD – Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF) enables the production of components on the ISS to meet both NASA and commercial objectives.  Parts, entire experiments, and tools can be created on demand utilizing the AMF.  The AMF is capable of producing parts using a wide variety of thermopolymers, including engineered plastics.

Shouldn't reality posts be in "Advanced concepts"?  --Nomadd

Offline Mariusuiram

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Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #56 on: 07/03/2017 06:31 pm »
In-Space industrialization is just a small step away.

For large amounts a DragonLab dedicated flight could produce quite a lot of fiber per flight. I believe the data was that 1 kg of source equates to 3km of fiber. So for 1 mt of fiber manufactured in a 2mt plant would produce 3,000,000 meters of fiber. At a sale price of $100/meter (that is less than the current price for the worst quality fiber) the revenue would be $300M. The cost of the flight of both the Dragon2 and F9 (both of which are reused) at about $100M/flight results in $200M profit. Because of the enormous amount of fiber this represents is why I used just $100/m for this supper quality fiber instead of its value when very little of it is available of $3,000/m.

If I had used the $3,000/m the revenue from a single flight would be $3B!!!!!!!!!!!!

So there is a lot of room for high costs of space travel.

I think the key consideration is scale and market size. Previous calculations about running a massive fiber production operation in space assume there is unlimited demand for this ultra-high quality fiber at current prices. Most likely there is not and the price is linked to the volume.

If a company wants to target that ultra-high quality fiber market, it will probably do small scale production on the ISS or in some other shared format.

If the goal is to create thousands+ km of this for applications where it is replacing an existing silica fiber, the price of the product should be more in line with existing costs. There is not some urgent life threatening need to replace all our fiber optics. But if the cost is comparable, upgrades will happen (or within reason at least).  From looking online (assuming the # of fibers should be multiplied by the length) I see bulk fiber in the $1 to $2/meter range if calculating it per fiber not per cable.

Point is there is a need to understand the market size of the various sub-markets in terms of finished product.

So there might be a market for 5-10 kg of fiber spooling in space at prices that make it viable. But then order of magnitude cost reductions required to access markets with fiber demand in terms of tons. This all isn't necessarily a bad thing or to imply its impossible, just a reminder of natural market dynamics.
« Last Edit: 07/03/2017 06:36 pm by Mariusuiram »

Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #57 on: 07/07/2017 01:50 pm »
In-Space industrialization is just a small step away.

For large amounts a DragonLab dedicated flight could produce quite a lot of fiber per flight. I believe the data was that 1 kg of source equates to 3km of fiber. So for 1 mt of fiber manufactured in a 2mt plant would produce 3,000,000 meters of fiber. At a sale price of $100/meter (that is less than the current price for the worst quality fiber) the revenue would be $300M. The cost of the flight of both the Dragon2 and F9 (both of which are reused) at about $100M/flight results in $200M profit. Because of the enormous amount of fiber this represents is why I used just $100/m for this supper quality fiber instead of its value when very little of it is available of $3,000/m.

If I had used the $3,000/m the revenue from a single flight would be $3B!!!!!!!!!!!!

So there is a lot of room for high costs of space travel.

I think the key consideration is scale and market size. Previous calculations about running a massive fiber production operation in space assume there is unlimited demand for this ultra-high quality fiber at current prices. Most likely there is not and the price is linked to the volume.

If a company wants to target that ultra-high quality fiber market, it will probably do small scale production on the ISS or in some other shared format.

If the goal is to create thousands+ km of this for applications where it is replacing an existing silica fiber, the price of the product should be more in line with existing costs. There is not some urgent life threatening need to replace all our fiber optics. But if the cost is comparable, upgrades will happen (or within reason at least).  From looking online (assuming the # of fibers should be multiplied by the length) I see bulk fiber in the $1 to $2/meter range if calculating it per fiber not per cable.

Point is there is a need to understand the market size of the various sub-markets in terms of finished product.

So there might be a market for 5-10 kg of fiber spooling in space at prices that make it viable. But then order of magnitude cost reductions required to access markets with fiber demand in terms of tons. This all isn't necessarily a bad thing or to imply its impossible, just a reminder of natural market dynamics.
Once you get to bulk replacement of silica fibers the following is used to calculate the business model for the price of the ZBLAM. A ZBLAM fiber has less loss/m than silica requiring fewer repeaters. A ZBLAM fiber has 10X the data capability than a silica fiber. So even at 10X times the price of silica it is more cost advantageous on a $/bit basis to replace silica cables with ZBLAM cables to increase the cables data rate capability than to add more silica fibers when ZBLAM fibers are at <$20/m price. At $20/m that equates to for source and finished product weight of 1kg $60,000/kg ($20/m*3000m/kg=$60,000/kg). At current costs for launch of 3,000kg and its return at $150M, launch cost to revenue is $150M transport to and from orbit costs to $180M in revenue. In this case profit will be  small as there will be other costs. As it stands currently with the use of ISS and costs of transport of the MIS hardware and its tending/maintenance/operation this low $/m value is not reachable. But lower the cost of transport and the business case starts to become stronger for bulk strands manufacture in space.

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: 3-D Printing in Space
« Reply #58 on: 08/09/2017 10:18 am »
Made in space Archinaut: In-space Robotics"
This is 3d printing in space.



The only limit on structure size is feed stock and Archinaut reliability.
« Last Edit: 08/09/2017 10:18 am by TrevorMonty »

Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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