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Made In Space, Inc.<\/a> is known as the company behind the 3D printers<\/a> on board the International Space Station. Astronauts have used the startup\u2019s AMF, or Additive Manufacturing Facility, on the ISS to churn out everything from finger splints to tools, sculptures and even other printer parts.<\/p>\n Now, the company is revealing a video rendering of its larger Archinaut system<\/a>, a\u00a0factory in the sky operated by autonomous robots. The Archinaut\u00a0can produce and assemble large equipment, such as\u00a0satellites or even entire spacecraft, while in orbit.<\/p>\n According to Made In Space CEO and president Andrew Rush<\/a>, \u201cIt\u2019s our ambition to develop the manufacturing technologies that will usher in the era of true commercial space utilization.\u201d Literally, he is hoping to enable colonization of other planets, with millions of people living and working in beautiful, microgravity environments.<\/p>\n The company believes, he said, \u201cManufacturing things in space lets us unlock possibilities you can\u2019t when you have to design things to survive launch.\u201d During launch<\/a>, tremendous forces push down on any spacecraft and the people within, obviously. Rush added, \u201cAny time you can pack more efficiently, and save mass, it helps make new missions possible or current missions more cost-effective.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of the biggest scientific and engineering challenges the company faced when developing the Archinaut were around material choices and hardware. The company had to determine which materials could be used for its own systems\u2019 parts, as well as to be extruded by the system and assembled and used in space.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to figure out what can survive and provide good strength and longevity, while standing up to wild temperature swings, radiation and atomic oxygen environments which try to eat away at your parts,\u201d Rush said.<\/p>\n On the hardware side, the company couldn\u2019t simply mimic 3D printer<\/a> designs that work well on earth. Those are typically built as boxes that pump out items smaller than their own build area. \u201cIt\u2019s simply not an option to fly a 50-meter cube to space to print out 20-meter satellite reflectors,\u201d Rush said.<\/p>\n Instead, the company devised what it calls ESAMM, an \u201cextended structure additive manufacturing machine.\u201d In essence, it works like a team in a glassblowing studio who move around manipulating materials while they are still pliable, and then assemble and sometimes fuse or bolt large pieces together. Rush described it as a kind of \u201cinside out\u201d printer that doesn\u2019t have a limited build area.<\/p>\n The printer (reflected in the video embedded here) is about the size of a school kid\u2019s backpack, and can manufacture a truss structure that\u2019s several meters long, or even longer, if users kept adding feedstock to it. The company is agnostic about where material feedstock comes from. Its systems can make use of in situ resources like material mined from asteroids or recycled space debris.<\/p>\n A NASA-funded project, the Archinaut Development Program<\/a>\u00a0also involves Northrop Grumman and Oceaneering Space Systems as subcontractors. Currently, the company has built one Archinaut system for a commercial customer that it does not yet have permission to name. It has the ambition to fly more missions and build more Archinaut systems in the near future.<\/p>\n With 40 full-time employees based at the NASA Ames Research Center<\/a> in San Jose, Calif., Made In Space has never taken on venture funding. But the company has been profitable every year since it was founded in 2010, which may surprise some of the new space startups still finding their way.<\/p>\n Why not raise equity funding? \u201cAs we were getting started, we realized we were on a really big mission, to help people live and work in space,\u201d said Rush. \u201cWe think this is a long-term vision. And given the complexity and scope of the work this will take, it would be hard to promise VCs a return for their investment along the traditional time frame.\u201d<\/p>\n Featured Image: madeinspace.us<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/05\/screen-shot-2017-05-05-at-15-38-38.png?w=680\")
Made In Space is known as the company behind the 3D printers on board the International Space Station. Astronauts have used the startup’s Additive Manufacturing Facility to churn out everything from finger splints to tools — and even other printer parts. Now the company is revealing a video rendering of its larger Archinaut system, a factory in the sky operated by autonomous robots. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/img><\/a>
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