NASA Funds Company To 3D-Print Spacecraft Parts in Orbit

An anonymous reader quotes Engadget: NASA is expanding its efforts to bring 3D printing to space. The agency has given Made In Space a $73.3 million contract to demonstrate the ability to 3D-print spacecraft parts in orbit using Archinaut One, a robotic manufacturing ship due to launch in 2022 or later. The vessel will fly aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket and 3D-print two 32-foot beams on each side, with each unfurling two solar arrays. The completed arrays could produce up to five times more power than the solar panels you normally find on spacecraft this size, NASA said...

If successful, it could alter how NASA and others approach building and fixing spacecraft. This could lead to building spacecraft (albeit smaller ones at this stage) in orbit, of course, but it could also let space agencies launch small satellites that receive large power collectors once they're floating above Earth. It could also lead to fewer spacewalks by having robots build items that would otherwise require human involvement.

Should I sue? I have trademarked "Maid in Space"

[mykepredko]

It's getting pretty cluttered up there and I know where to find some <Insert pejorative terms for "Illegal Aliens"> to clean it up.

Any links to explain the technology used?

[mykepredko]

This is actually quite interesting - I'd love to know what is the material being used to build the structures and how they are handling the different situations in space including direct sunlight/dark as well as hot and cold? Vacuum, I presume, is easy to deal with.

Any links on the equipment/materials being used?

First step towards a von Neumann probe

[oic0]

Knowing us, we will put little weapons in the things and wipe out all of the space terrorists who conveniently happen to be where the space oil is located.

Raw Materials

[yeshuawatso]

So how is this thing getting its raw materials? Are they just storing all of this material in the vessel? When it's out of material does it just fall back to Earth to burn up? The article's links didn't provide much in terms of scientific substance. The line "3D-print two 32-foot beams on each side, with each unfurling two solar arrays" would imply it's printing rolled up solar arrays? Anyone got any better links to some science parts to this?

Re:

[R3d M3rcury]

Here's the NASA Press Release [nasa.gov], but I don't think i says much more. But it has an entertaining video included.

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[Immerman]

I would suspect it's not printing rolled up solar arrays (I wish!) so much as "flag/tent poles" to unfurl them onto. Structural components are a lot simpler to print, and benefit greatly from being constructed in place as a solid object, rather than some sort of telescoping origami structure. Potentially much better strength-to-weight ratio in a single solid structure.

I suspect it will be a fair while before we see much "high tech" production in space. Structural components though are simple, and generall

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[Anonymous Coward]

It's only partially a 3d printer, and far more a robotic assembler.
They seem to have a goal of extruding plastics and metals, but beyond that it is used as scaffolding to affix prefab components like solar cells onto.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opd235EgqG8 [youtube.com]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvwXgZhrr-s [youtube.com]

The first concept video shows a metal support structure being printed, and solar cell panels attached in place as it goes, made with the same fold-up design used now.

It doesn't mention how or if they will rest

Antenna Parts

[hardwarejunkie9]

Had the pleasure of overseeing a class team working on the viability of printing components in space, particularly antennas. They assessed 3 different kinds of conductive materials. Turns out that the best of them was a single order of magnitude too weak of a conductor. Like a bunch of proper engineers, they fixed it by wrapping it in copper tape B-)

Re: Antenna Parts

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Depends on your printer; anywhere from "lousy plastics made worse"; to "aerospace-grade metal components". Most cheap printers produce pretty tepid output(best case is in the range of ABS with porosity and layer delamination problems vs. the proper injection molded stuff); but $$$$ selective laser sintering and similar can do much better.

The convenient thing is that a lot of spacecraft structural components don't actually need to be particularly strong if they aren't going to try to leave or re-enter the

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[Immerman]

What would make it more complicated?

If you have a 3D printer that can print when upside down on Earth (simulated -1g), as many of them can, it probably won't have any greater difficulty in free-fall - the machine doesn't significantly care about gravity.

Now, vacuum might make things interesting - heat dissipation is rather important to the process, and vacuum slows that down a fair bit. Of course there's no necessity that an orbital printer operates in vacuum, but it does make it a lot more useful. Fortun

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[Immerman]

Perhaps , but evaporation tends to become boiling in vacuum, which could have profound negative consequences. Evaporation also tends to involve a great deal of mass loss, which probably makes it undesirable in orbit where shipping costs make gold only 11x more expensive than water.(current Falcon 9 launch costs about $2,500/lb, or $5.50/gram, compared to gold's $56/gram)