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Science

Varda Space, Rocket Lab Nail First-of-Its-Kind Spacecraft Landing in Utah (techcrunch.com) 24

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
A spacecraft containing pharmaceutical drugs that were grown on orbit has finally returned to Earth today after more than eight months in space. From a report: Varda Space Industries' in-space manufacturing capsule, called Winnebago-1, landed in the Utah desert at around 4:40 p.m. EST. Inside the capsule are crystals of the drug ritonavir, which is used to treat HIV/AIDS. It marks a successful conclusion of Varda's first experimental mission to grow pharmaceuticals on orbit, as well as the first time a commercial company has landed a spacecraft on U.S. soil, ever. The capsule will now be sent back to Varda's facilities in Los Angeles for analysis, and the vials of ritonavir will be shipped to a research company called Improved Pharma for post-flight characterization, Varda said in a statement. The company will also be sharing all the data collected through the mission with the Air Force and NASA, per existing agreements with those agencies.

The first-of-its-kind reentry and landing is also a major win for Rocket Lab, which partnered with Varda on the mission. Rocket Lab hosted Varda's manufacturing capsule inside its Photon satellite bus; through the course of the mission, Photon provided power, communications, attitude control and other essential operations. At the mission's conclusion, the bus executed a series of maneuvers and de-orbit burns that put the miniature drug lab on the proper reentry trajectory. The final engine burn was executed shortly after 4 p.m. EST. Photon burned up in the atmosphere as planned while the capsule, protected by a heat shield and with the aid of a parachute, continued to land.
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Varda Space, Rocket Lab Nail First-of-Its-Kind Spacecraft Landing in Utah More

Varda Space, Rocket Lab Nail First-of-Its-Kind Spacecraft Landing in Utah

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  • How much will space grown drugs cost ? Who will be able to afford them ? Are they really that much better than stuff grown on Earth ?

    • Re:What is the cost ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Thursday February 22, 2024 @11:21AM (#64260078)

      How much will space grown drugs cost ? Who will be able to afford them ? Are they really that much better than stuff grown on Earth ?

      This is probably what they are trying to find out.

    • All good questions. The summary says the drug comes in crystal form, so maybe it is not possible to get the right yields of this one without micro-gravity?

      • Inside the capsule are crystals of the drug ritonavir, which is used to treat HIV/AIDS.

        I wish them success.

        Can you imagine if they came up with a definitive cure for AIDS?

        Man...if you couldn't get laid THAT day, there's no hope for you.

        I can imagine an uptick in divorces....with men no longer worried about "you fuck/you die" any longer...

        It sure would be great to go back to the days, say in the 70's where you could fuck anything that moved, and not have to be wrapped in a tire for protection....worst c

    • Re:What is the cost ? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by TWX ( 665546 ) on Thursday February 22, 2024 @11:25AM (#64260096)

      The cost to orbit has come down dramatically in the last decade. My expectation is that setting up the automated production process is harder than the launch, but if the product can be made much more efficiently in microgravity than on the surface, and if the machinery needed to perform the production can be standardized and used to just send-up, produce, and return, then it might not be as bad as it initially sounds.

      Consider too, if they can integrate this into satellites that already are expected to have short service-lives, where it can piggyback up, do its thing, and then deorbit when the life of satellite is ended, that might further help.

      • Especially when you consider the near future of fully reusable launch vehicles. The expected cost of Starship is $20 per kg to orbit. A dose of ritinovar is 100-200mg, so that means the bare minimum on launch costs alone is 0.2Â per dose. After that itâ(TM)s all about how much it costs to build the automated fabrication satellite.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by Vrallis ( 33290 )

      My guess:

      In the US, $4m per dose.

      In India, $4 per dose.

      • Why is that modded troll?
        He might be off by a zero in both cases.
        But otherwise he is completely correct.

        Was there not prize bomb for insulin in resent years in the US? And for adrenaline?

        Stuff that literally costs nothing, the packaging more expensive than the content, gets sold for thousands of dollars in the US.

    • This particular existing drug can almost certainly be made cheaper on the ground, but they have to test their system with something.

      Anyway, pharmaceuticals have some of the best value per pound of material so it ought to be one of the first fields where space manufacturing could make economic sense. Right now you can launch stuff into space at about $3K per kilo at the low end. Very expensive if you're making kg-scale things, less so if you're making drugs measured in milligrams. An extra handful of dollars

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      Falcon 9 launches are now able to launch to LEO for about $1500/kg but once they get the bugs worked out of Starship (the new heavy rapidly re-usable launch vehicle), the projected cost is something like $150/kg. Assuming your drug lab equipment takes up a small portion of the 100t payload, then the cost to get all those materials to orbit, manufacture it, and return it isn't out of line with costs for pharmaceuticals you can get now.

  • BS Stunt (Score:2, Interesting)

    by methano ( 519830 )
    I'm an organic chemist. I've been doing medicinal chemistry for 40+ years. You don't grow ritonavir. This is BS of the highest order. I'm pretty sure there is no advantage to making ritonavir in space. In fact, I'm pretty sure there are tons of reasons not to bother. This is just a publicity stunt at best.
    • I'm no expert, but there are a few papers listed at the bottom of Varda's biopharma [varda.com] page.

      Apparently you can anneal one form of the compound to generate additional forms, and maybe zero-G/free-fall makes a difference? They'll know soon...

    • They are trying to generate the Andromeda Strain of the molecule, which is obviously not possible on Earth.
    • Someone maybe just picked a name to distract from the first Purple Kush grown in space? ;-)

    • I'm an organic chemist. I've been doing medicinal chemistry for 40+ years. You don't grow ritonavir..

      You do, however, grow crystals. Which is what this did: grow crystals of ritonavir.

      Other than x-ray crystallography, I'm not sure why you want to grow perfect crystals of ritonavir, but I assume it's primarily to test the crystal growth technology in microgravity.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Plugh ( 27537 )
      I'm a chemical engineer. I cannot think of an industrially-relevant process that will be made *easier* in a zero-g environment even if there is some physical-chem reason for doing so. We have decades of Unit Operations that have been optimized to hell and back ON EARTH.

      This is stupidly obviously just for propaganda purposes, or a cover for some covert work.

  • No helicopters were used to catch the falling samples. I said that would never "be a thing" back in 2020.

    "Growing" medicines in space only makes a difference when zero gravity is a factor, and not just ANY FACTOR, but a factor big enough to make up for the cost of putting it in a sterile environment, launching into space, recovery, unpacking in a sterile environment, etc.

    What a bunch of PR crap. This did nothing for your average medicine-needing person.

    E
    FAA Commercial Helicopter Pilot and amateur medical

  • >>Varda Space Industries' in-space manufacturing capsule, called Winnebago-1, landed in the Utah desert at around 4:40 p.m. EST. Inside the capsule are crystals of the drug ritonavir

    Crystal drugs being delivered to the desert in a vehicle called Winnebago. If this is supposed to be a Breaking Bad reference they messed up, because the RV in the TV show was a Fleetwood Bounder.

  • It marks ... the first time a commercial company has landed a spacecraft on U.S. soil, ever.

    As opposed to all the non-commercial companies?

    I'm curious what sort of definitional contortions you need to apply to conclude that SpaceX is not a commercial enterprise which has landed a spacecraft on US soil. Maybe they don't think the first stage counts as a spacecraft?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by berj ( 754323 )

      Maybe they don't think the first stage counts as a spacecraft?

      A rocket's first stage, in fact, isn't a spacecraft.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      There's something to be said for the distinction between sub-orbital and orbital spacecraft, however. Winnebago-1 is, of course, the latter but there have been a number of commercial sub-orbital spacecraft landings in the US (the various SpaceShipOne and BlueOrigin craft)

  • Is "Vardra Space" associated with authoress Elizrabeth Mroon?

    Inquiring readers want to know!

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