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MANUFACTURING FACILITY IN SPACE

20 November, 2015 - 17:25

The first Industrial Space Facility (ISF) will be ready to launch by the end of 1990. This privately owned, human-tended, orbiting space facility will provide rental space for manufacturing materials in a microgravity environment.

The ISF, being developed by Space Industries, Inc., of Houston and Westinghouse Electric Corporation, is expected to be used first as a materials research laboratory and power source for a docked space shuttle, which will thus be able to remain longer in orbit. But many other uses are anticipated. Business opportunities aboard the facility are expected to include:

Purification of both pharmaceutical and biological products

Growth of large protein crystals to improve the quality and speed of engineering new drugs

Growth of large ultra-pure semiconductor crystals for high-speed computers and advanced electronic devices

Development of new polymers and catalysts

Containerless processing of improved fiber optics

Creation of metal alloys and other composites that cannot be produced on Earth

The microgravity environment of the ISF will eliminate heat convection and hydrostatic pressure. It will also eliminate sedimentation and buoyancy, enabling the fusion of mixed particles or immiscible liquids into homogeneous composites impossible to make on Earth.

The ISF will not be permanently manned, but it is designed to be habitable and will provide a "shirt sleeve" work environment for astronauts when docked with the NASA space shuttle. The ISF is designed to work in tandem with the shuttle and will be in permanent orbit 200 miles above the Earth. NASA has already agreed to deliver two ISFs into space via the space shuttle.

As a major private-sector component of the space program, the industrial space facility will provide a critical bridge between the resumption of shuttle flights and the launching of the NASA space station. The facility could also serve as a "construction shack" for building up the station and, once the space station is operational, provide it with special purpose buildings and production facilities.

SOURCE: Space Industries, Inc., 71 1 West Bay Area Boulevard, Suite 320, Webster, Texas 77598; in Leland A. C. Weaver, "Factories in Space: The Role of Robots," The Futurist, May-June 1987, 33.