DARPA skips the lab, will head to orbit to test space manufacturing tech

After several years of lab-testing ideas for orbital manufacturing technology, the US Department of Defense's research arm has decided to head into orbit for the latest round of experiments.  DARPA's Novel Orbital and Moon Manufacturing, Materials, and Mass-efficient Design (NOM4D) program kicked off in 2022 with the aim of …

[Eclectic Man]

I can hear the stains of 'An der schonen blauen Donau' already.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZoSYsNADtY

[Eclectic Man]

typo

D'Oh

"stains" -> "strains"

[John Smith 19]

Impressive

Good to see they are gung-ho for this.

(Potentially) exciting times.

[that one in the corner]

How large it could go without space becoming an issue

Ignite one end? Which makes it sound as though they are using oxygen from the atmosphere inside the airlock (although the illustration seems to show it sitting exposed to vacuum, so - probably not).

Otherwise, if the all the reactants needed are contained within the materials of the unignited tube, one could imagine unrolling/extruding the flat tube outside the ISS (by robot, of course), in which case space would not be an issue. Although there may be issues where Space is a problem (e.g. outgassing from the reaction - aka a rocket engine).

Maybe this will lead to a proper SF space manufactory, where the tubes are extruded from a reactor, cut to length, pointed in the right direction and the blue touch paper lit. By the time it has powered itself to the required point in the building site (to be snagged by the Caltech Arm's descendant), it will be fully cooked and ready for use.

[StudeJeff]

Great stuff!

While it's a few years out yet it will be even better when we can make things from space sourced materials instead of being dragged up out of Earth's deep gravity well.