March 2015
Sizing down and reaching higher with CubeSats
... was ignored by the industry, but a generation of engineering students began asking the simple question: “Why should space manufacture and design be different than that of personal computers or robots or any other terrestrial engineering unit?” Jump...
May 2024
Spaceflight revolution on a shoestring
... are potentially worth several tens of billion GBP per year. Space manufacture will require raw materials to be transported up to a factory in orbit, and finished products down. Space-based solar power will require regular launches for assembling the...
April 2025
Azores rising – Portugal’s Atlantic outpost vying to become space gateway
... There are other elements to the long-term vision too. “Beyond launching satellites, we see potential for in-space manufacturing and re-entry services,” says Carvalho. “The Azores are perfectly situated for retrieval operations - there’s a vast...
July 2018
Rediscovering UK sovereign launch capability
...there has been a significant shift in the nature of the satellite market, the bread and butter of the UK space manufacturing industry. It is predicted that there will be a tenfold increase worldwide in small satellite payloads being launched into low...
January 2019
Saving humanity – is space up to the job?
...are now scores of proposals for lunar colonies. The technologies associated with resource acquisition, materials processing, space manufacturing and more will be central to the ultimate development of one or more colonies on the Moon. One of the keys...
July 2019
Who owns outer space?
... artist concept from 1977 showing an asteroid mining mission to an Earth-approaching asteroid. A NASA-sponsored study on space manufacturing held at Ames Research Center (ARC) in summer of 1977 provided much of the technical basis for the painting...
