IT’S A Thursday night and you’re bored, so you launch an app on your smartphone. A crisp view of Earth as seen from space pops up, and you start flying around. Moments later, your friend logs on and joins you in formation. But this isn’t a video game – you’re piloting a real spacecraft.
This vision is pie in the sky for now, but it could be possible in the near future thanks to efforts bringing manufacturing and consumer services to orbit, enabled by 3D printing, robotics and virtual reality. Welcome to 400 kilometres up, where business is booming.
“We want people to be thinking they can actually use space. It’s not just for governments and billion-dollar companies,” says Brad Kohlenberg of , a Californian firm building 3D printers for use in orbit.
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“We want people to think they can actually use space. It’s not just for billion-dollar companies”
Made In Space is on the crest of a wave of private companies trying to get consumer space technology off the ground. They launched their first printer to the International Space Station last year, where NASA used it to print a wrench from a . Later this year, the company plans to launch a that will allow anyone on the ground to build things in orbit.
The great advantage of manufacturing on the ISS is cutting down on launches, which are the riskiest part of any orbital endeavour. CubeSats – small, standardised satellites that have seen a boom in popularity in recent years – are used to do small experiments by everyone from governments to schoolchildren. They hitch a ride on rockets launching larger spacecraft, or get transported to the ISS on a cargo ship, where they are deployed by a robotic arm in one of the station’s airlocks. But in the past year, three uncrewed rockets bound for the ISS have failed on launch, taking out dozens of CubeSats in the process. “Getting to orbit is an issue for them at the moment,” says , space analyst at consultancy firm London Economics.
Made In Space has a solution specifically for CubeSats. Partnering with Texas firm , which helps deploy CubeSats on the ISS, the company plans to offer a service called “” that will allow customers to build in orbit starting in 2016. “The stash and deploy model could bypass the risk,” Sadlier says.
On demand
The idea is to store many standard parts on the ISS, such as batteries, solar panels and sensors. When a customer places an order, Made In Space will print a plastic frame, and an astronaut will snap everything together before launching it out of the station (see “Building blocks”). “We’re developing technologies that can start pumping satellites out of a platform orbiting Earth,” says Kohlenberg.
The strategy could also get CubeSats into orbit more quickly. Currently, owners have to wait to piggyback on the launch of bigger, more expensive spacecraft, which are often delayed. “Right now it’s months to years after you’ve built something and have it ready to go to space,” says Kohlenberg. Using 3D printing skips that wait. “You can imagine hackathons where people are designing spacecraft and have them operating in space over a weekend.”
But space explorers are busy people, and can’t spend all day assembling satellites. So Made In Space and NanoRacks eventually want to build an uncrewed space station to manufacture satellites automatically. “When you look five years out, it’s clear to me that with 3D printing and robotics, uncrewed platforms will be able to deploy on demand,” says NanoRacks CEO Jeffrey Manber.
At the moment NanoRacks charges around $85,000 to launch a CubeSat built on Earth, but automation and the ability to launch on demand should make the space-built kind much cheaper and create new possibilities. Customers could order a satellite to fly over and image an area just hit by a natural disaster, says Manber, but he also envisions more light-hearted services like beaming messages around the world.
Another Californian firm, , hopes to be the first to provide space-based entertainment to the public by putting a virtual reality camera on the ISS. It plans to sell a Netflix-style monthly subscription to VR movies from orbit, viewable on a smartphone or headset. The goal is to give ordinary people a chance to feel the “overview effect” – the transformative experience that astronauts report after seeing Earth from space. “The idea is to bring that to everyone in a cost effective, scalable way,” says CEO Ryan Holmes.
“It would give ordinary people the transformative experience of seeing Earth from space in real time”
SpaceVR plans to send the electronics for its VR device to the ISS on a cargo ship, but will work with Made In Space to 3D print the housing in orbit. That means the camera as a whole doesn’t have to be built to survive the stresses of launch, saving money on costly launch-proof materials like titanium. “It just made more sense to start manufacturing in space,” says chief technology officer Isaac DeSouza.
Kohlenberg thinks others will find similar benefits once their satellite deployment platform is complete. “You can imagine spaceships and satellites the likes of which we have never seen, because you’ve always had to build for the launch vehicle,” he says. “Now we can build whatever we want.”
Holmes says SpaceVR also wants to develop a range of consumer products. “We are going to develop CubeSats that people can log in to and control from their computer or cellphone,” he says. Squadrons of up to eight satellites could let you fly around with your friends and view Earth from space in real time, suggests DeSouza. “This is the next phase of space exploration,” he says.
It remains to be seen whether consumers are truly ready to embrace space. Space VR is looking to raise half a million dollars on . “Space technology is quite esoteric, consumers don’t know they want or need it yet because they don’t understand what’s possible,” says Sadlier.
And before any of that, Made In Space and NanoRacks will need to demonstrate that they can successfully manufacture in orbit. Such mass production of small satellites will also raise concerns about space debris, and the possibility of Gravity-style collisions that could take out larger spacecraft. CubeSats orbiting Earth don’t hang around forever, they lose altitude and burn up in the atmosphere fairly quickly, but the companies acknowledge it’s something they need to take into account. “It’s an issue that needs to be studied to make sure we don’t start banging in to each other up there,” says Manber.
Still, Made In Space and NanoRacks are confident their time has come. “It will be a surprise to someone in 2015 what we’ll be able to do in space in 2020,” says Manber. “We’re finally at the start line, and it is going to be a very exciting couple of years.”
This article appeared in print under the headline “Print your own satellite – in space”
