Cato speculate?

RE: "... access to zero gravity and hard vacuum ..." I agree with the
implications that access to low cost conditions that provide manufacturing
advantages can be beneficial. Micro-g and vacuum are useful but are only
part of the story. There are three others that I know would also be very
useful.
1) High and low temperatures. Focused solar energy can reach 6000 K, and
shade from it can provide perhaps 60 K, depending on the heat flow and the
local environment. The solar energy is also accessible for driving
photochemical reactions, for one example, the natural production of ozone in
Earth's atmosphere. This energy flow can also be used for welding,
distillation, zone refining, etc. Many forms of energy for manufacturing
will be cheap in solar space.
2. Large volumes for manufacturing, for example, reaction vessels to
process organic materials, which on Earth is usually done in condensed phase
(liquid, or gases at 1 atm. or above) could be done in space in volumes of
cubic kilometers and therefore using dilute gas and plasma phases. With
solar flux, new methods of manufacturing pharmaceuticals, fullerenes, etc.
can be investigated. It might be cheaper in space to make amino acids
(which we need in our diet, and normally get from proteins) directly using
sunlight than to grow animals for their flesh.
3. Bulk (low cost) materials from asteroids and comets. A small solid
"M" or metal asteroid such as Amun, probably has a mass of 30 billions
tones, and contains (at current Earth market prices) $ 8,000 billion worth
of iron and nickel, $ 6,000 billion worth of cobalt, and $ 6,000 billion
worth of platinum-group metals. See page 112 of John S. Lewis' Mining the
Sky, Helix Books, 1996. Having access to such materials would assist space
manufacturing.
Another useful market for products made in space would be devices which
can now be built on Earth, like 30 foot diameter glass telescope mirror,
which would be nice to have in space, but they can not be lifted from Earth
on any existing space craft to orbit. They could be manufactured in space.
There are many such devices like this, and once folks started thinking about
others, there will be many more envisioned.
4. An honest presentation must also mention disadvantages of orbital
manufacturing. Labor will be high! And for products destined for Earth
markets, transportation costs for down shipments could be significant.
Perhaps those costs could be lowered by building re-entry vehicles in space
for one way trips down. Or perhaps building these devices which after
making a trip down carrying freight, could be re-manufactured or outfitted
to become full blown space craft for being launched from Earth, sort of an
empty shell of a space shuttle like craft.
Best wishes, Jay Huebner