The Space Industry is not a Question of if, it’s when

How Industries are Entering Their Final Frontier Experts say space industry is getting closer and closer to coming true.

By Miles Fredrick Kjorness

Over the past few years we have witnessed many problems that take place in the global trade market. At first it may seem that there is no way around these bottlenecks, least of all in one of the most expensive environments, space, But what If I told you that there is.

With renewed interest in the space sector, private companies have started to think of the possible profit that could come from space production. Is it possible to build and maintain factories in space that make high quality products for people?

It is important to know that we most likely cannot have anywhere near a cost effective factory or production facility in space for decades. As Erik Kulu from Factories in Space puts it “Like the costs of still putting a factory to space, even if it’s a commercial space station, and then bringing the materials up and down. It’s still really expensive. I don’t think research is there yet.”

Erik Kulu lives in Estonia and for his whole life has been interested in space travel. That is why when Estonia started to work on its first cube satellite,Kulu jumped to the opportunity working on Estonia’s first satellite. Since then Kulu has been looking into the commercial space sector, and even created a website detailing the pluses and minuses of pursuing industry in space, and a ranking chart based on development of different space companies working to achieve an industry in space. But we are still far from ready.

This does not mean that we will not get to see a booming space industry in our lifetime But we are getting closer and closer .Recent advances in rocket technology

have made it possible for us to send up more payload than ever with an absurdly low cost per launch(about 2 million dollars). This is achieved with many advancements, but one particularly important factor is reusability.

Reusability is how a company such as SpaceX manages to get such an edge on cost and speed of launches. The newest rocket in this field is Starship. “Starship

is a new rocket that SpaceX is building. It will be fully reusable, both the first stage and upper stage will return to Earth and none of the parts will be thrown away so it means they’re able to land back a few times and then launch again multiple times per day which is like a very revolutionary idea ” This greatly improves the situation of the space industry. It may be possible with this technology to start to procure working factories in space. Building in space will be very expensive for a long time, so the question of “what even is the point of building in space, arises. Kulu’s answer was “here have been like many news articles saying that the Siebler, an optical fiber, might be much better when we make it in microgravity,” and “or it might be say growing human organs in space.”” This shows that there is hope for this industry despite the high cost, since we simply cannot produce some things on earth. This means that some sort of luxury or highly coveted products could be made in space at a higher quality.

But if scientists can manage to find profit in space, there will be a whole new frontier for humans, and with competition in the market, companies will thrive and make better and better technologies in space. As Kulu puts it, “I believe that will kick off like a new wave of technology development. Like all the companies coming in governments coming in developing new technologies, pushing further and further in the solar system, going to moon build-

“putting a factory to space, even if it’s a commercial space station, and then bringing the materials up and down. It’s still really expensive. I don’t think research is there yet.”

This image was take by spacex showing the exhaust of a landing spacex craft, Published on April 9, 2016

ing more things there. I think it will kick off like, like a rolling stone that that can’t be stopped anymore”

These developments could also help the planet itself. Recently one of the biggest geopolitical challenges humans are facing is climate change, and by moving industry to space we may be able to stop it, or at least slow it down. Not only that,it may make people reconsider many ideas we have fought over for years As Kulu said “I’m hopeful that will actually help to solve most problems on Earth, including climate change, both because it will change us seeing Earth from space, like, we are here together, like let’s stop fighting and take up this new adventure.” In the end we don’t know what the future will hold; Let’s just hope that we can get moving in the right direction. And you never know, we may be closer to another space race and closer to the stars than we ever could imagine.