AsterAnts

> 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.

Smart design can considerably reduce the number of different
components needed. The number of different parts used to
build something on Earth reflects the fact that manufacturing
here is considerably simpler than it would be off planet. For
initial construction of off planet infrastructure the most
important thing would have to be ease of manufacture, which will
translate into using suboptimal structures in many cases. Only
the stuff that's going to be moved around needs to be light, and
even then it may make sense to take a hit in the weight in order
to simplify manufacturing, making up the difference in additional
fuel.

New cost models will be needed for certain. It might well turn out that
the best course is to churn out large amounts of carbon fiber and
epoxy and use cfiber composites extensively, even where they wouldn't
be used on earth. A modest factory turning out carbon composite erector
set like components could cover a lot of the infrastructure needs.
There would still have to be specialized fabs making custom components,
but a relatively small number of standardized parts could cover the
majority of needs, providing some efficiency was sacrificed.

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

Chips are an ideal candidate for launch from earth. Light, expensive,
hard to make.

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

True. But it can be done smartly, reducing costs by orders of magnitude.

......Andrew

Andrew Case
acase@...
Institute for Plasma Research
University of Maryland, College Park |