|
Space manufacturing is the production of manufactured goods in an environment outside a planetary atmosphere. Typically this includes conditions of microgravity and hard vacuum. Manufacturing in space has several potential advantages over Earth-based industry. # The unique environment can allow for industrial processes that cannot be readily reproduced on Earth. # Raw materials could be lifted to orbit from other bodies within the solar system and processed at a low expense compared to the cost of lifting materials into orbit from Earth. # Potentially hazardous processes can be performed in space with minimal risk to the environment of the Earth or other planets. # Items too large to launch on a rocket can be assembled in orbit for use in orbit. The space environment is expected to be beneficial for production of a variety of products. Once the heavy capitalization costs of assembling the mining and manufacturing facilities is paid, the production will need to be economically profitable in order to become self-sustaining and beneficial to society. The most significant cost is overcoming the energy hurdle for boosting materials into orbit. Once this barrier is significantly reduced in cost per kilogram, the entry price for space manufacturing can make it much more attractive to entrepreneurs. Economic requirements of space manufacturing imply a need to collect the requisite raw materials at a minimum energy cost. The economical movement of material in space is directly related to the delta-v, or change in velocity required to move from the mining sites to the manufacturing plants. Near-Earth asteroids, Phobos, Deimos and the lunar surface have a much lower delta-v compared to launching the materials from the surface of the Earth to Earth orbit. ==History== During the Soyuz 6 mission, Russian astronauts performed the first welding experiments in space. Three different welding processes were tested using a hardware unit called Vulkan. The tests included welding aluminum, titanium, and stainless steel. The Skylab mission, launched in May 1973, served as a laboratory to perform various space manufacturing experiments. The station was equipped with a materials processing facility that included a multi-purpose electric furnace, a crystal growth chamber, and an electron beam gun. Among the experiments to be performed was research on molten metal processing; photographing the behavior of ignited materials in zero-gravity; crystal growth; processing of immiscible alloys; brazing of stainless steel tubes, electron beam welding, and the formation of spheres from molten metal. The crew spent a total of 32 man-hours on materials science and space manufacturing investigation during the mission. The Space Studies Institute began hosting a bi-annual ''Space Manufacturing Conference'' in 1977. Microgravity research in materials processing continued in 1983 using the Spacelab facility. This module has been carried into orbit 26 times aboard the Space Shuttle, . In this role the shuttle has served as an interim, short-duration research platform in lieu of the upcoming International Space Station. In February 1994 and September 1995, the Wake Shield Facility was carried into orbit by the Space Shuttle. This demonstration platform used the vacuum created in the orbital wake to manufacture thin films of gallium arsenide and aluminum gallium arsenide. On May 31, 2005, the recoverable, unmanned Foton-M2 laboratory was launched into orbit. Among the experiments were crystal growth and the behavior of molten-metal in weightlessness. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「space manufacturing」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|