For some startups, the most urgent question in the manufacturing sector today is: How to make computer components, harvest stem cells or produce pharmaceuticals in space?
That has happened, at least at the research level. NASA has awarded $2 million in funding to scientists who want to research zero-gravity conditions to help create new gene and stem cell therapies.
US defense company Northrop Grumman has also partnered with a startup to produce semiconductors in space.
One expert said that by the end of this decade, we will use items containing some elements created outside the Earth.
To answer the question why go through the trouble of producing on the planet?, billionaire Jeff Bezos said that heavy manufacturing and air pollution industries can operate far from Earth so as not to affect human life.
Along with that, certain conditions in space, including lack ofravity, low temperatures, and near-perfect nowhere, mean certain components, such as crystals, can be created at better quality on land.
Joshua Western, CEO of Space Forge, a UK-based space technology manufacturer, said: Space is a better place to do most industrial processes. We live on a planet where matter is pressured. We make bakers, refrigerators and air pumps to help produce products on earth, but if you go into space, you will get those benefits for free.
Pharmaceutical companies are betting that new drugs could be produced in space. Merck has partnered with the International Space Station (ISS) to produce protein in a zero-gravity environment.
Astronauts conducting experiments with the pharmaceutical giant have discovered that crystals created to produce the cancer treatment Keytruda in space will be smaller and more even than crystals created on Earth.
More and more opportunities
Kevin Engelbert, managing Nasa's Space Production Application portfolio, said the agency has been collaborating with commercial partners to permit production beyond Earth since 2016. The goal is to develop a low-lying economy (Leo) and strengthen the role of the US in the technology world.
In July, California-based startup Varda Space Industries launched a celestial satellite into Earth's orbit.
According to technology news site Gizmodo, it is expected to become a space drug factory, specializing in the production of ritonavir crystals, an anti-viral drug used to treat HIV.
However, this is just the beginning. By 2031, the ISS will stop operations and fall to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. NASA will then rent space on commercial space vehicles. That is a move that will help the agency save $1.3 billion in 2031 alone.
Sita Sonty is the CEO of Space Tango, a company that cooperates with ISS to provide facilities to support research, development and production in a microgravity environment.
She said that as more and more private-owned dredgers appear, production demand will increase on the trajectory.
Aerospace manufacturing companies say the number of space-produced products will increase by the end of the decade, as they will no longer need to go through the ISS to go into space. The more private-owned offshore wind turbines are in space, the greater the opportunity for factories on earth.
