AsterAnts

>
> > An enormous investment any way you look at it.
>
> I wouldn't call a few crucibles an enormous investment.
>

Huh ?

It is a LOT of crucibles, not a few.

Take a look at the prices of crucibles, they are made of high grade
special alloys and
cast/machined to special profiles. One of them is expensive.
A lot of them is "an enormous investment".

In addition to crucibles, there are needs for precision dies,
workhardening equipment (forges, hammers, rollers)
and all the other things.

Not to mention the annealing equipment, and surface coating treatments,
e.g. case hardening. Electroplating, annealing, painting, etc etc.

There will be huge diversity of finished parts needed.
A typical spacecraft can contains hundreds of thousands of different
parts.

Each needs its own specialized manufacturing equipment.

We haven't even begun to discuss the equipemnt need for manufacturing
silicon wafers and semiconductors chips.

I repeat,
space manufacturing will require an enormous investment,
any way you look at it.

==

The vast majority of components,
espcially small lighhweight precision parts,
will "always" be most cheaply imported from Earth.
For example, it will be at least a century before manufacturing
chipsets in space will be viable. No problem, they
are quite small and ligthweight, we can import them from Earth fairly
cheaply.

The good candidates for space manufacturing are large simple heavy
items.

Things like pressure vessels and radiators.

The first complex things will will need in large quantities will be PV
cells, and
mechanical parts for Solar Dynamic generators. We need to give some
thought as
to how we would manufacture those items in space.

But for everything which on Earth today you can buy in a retail hardware
store,
for space we should most cheaply buy them in the same retail hardware
store and
shoot them into orbit.
I do not see that changing in the next century.

Cheers,

CR.

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