this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2025
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I'm just confused about what products can be manufactured completely autonomously, in a 0G environment, and are profitable enough to make space-based manufacture economical.
Unobtanium...
Making things that can only be made in 0G, then bringing them back to Earth to sell.
I suspect the manned ISS isn't too keen to add a continuously operating 1000C furnace component to their collection of modules.
Anything, because it's a hell of a lot cheaper than launching finished products from Earth.
Solar energy for computation perhaps, but cooling would be too expensive.
In an existing ecosystem of space mining and processing of all required elements, with no need to exit gravity wells, could be microchips. I don't think we are closer to that than Vinland settlers were to thirteen colonies.