Goods beyond earth: cheaper manufacturing in space
“In the zero gravity of space, we could manufacture in 30 days lifesaving medicines it would take 30 years to make on Earth. We can make crystals of exceptional purity to produce supercomputers, creating jobs, technologies and medical breakthroughs beyond anything we ever thought possible.” It is an exciting proposition. But these ambitious words were not spoken recently. They were part of Ronald Reagan’s 1985 State of the Union speech. At that point, Nasa had already spent over a decade conducting experiments to see if large-scale manufacturing plants could operate in space. “The idea was that the weightlessness of space could be used to make medicines in quantities and with purities that cannot be achieved with Earth’s gravity,” explains astronaut Charlie Walker, who joined the McDonnell…
