Starfall – Affordable, routine access to microgravity

We've run a dozen missions in LEO aboard the ISS. Any steps to remove the friction to launch and increase the cadence is a good thing. Spending a few weeks in LEO missions like this typically land in the Australian outback

We do education outreach to K-16 learning institutions around the world. There are many things that can be studied in the near absence of gravity. Fluids are a huge area of research (surface tension, sedimentation, etc). We germinate seeds and look for genetic changes, people study brain organoids, artificial retinas, crystals, et al

Space datacenters sounds dumb and impractical to me. Manufacturing semi conductor in space is actually a pretty interesting idea. I designed a few PVD, CVD, and IBE machines before. Ion thrusters from NASA are what semi conductors use as their source anyway. I can see the business proposition for processes like MBE that requires -12 pressure. It takes days, if not weeks to pump a chamber to those values.

So there are a few breakthrough therapeutics that rely on samples crystallized in microgravity. One of them is Keytruda or Pembrolizumab, a PD-1 inihibitor used as a neo-adjuvant in cancer therapy.

Historically, there was an issue with dosing pembrolizumab, as the manufacturing process was creating large uneven crystals that required physicians to process at the clinic to ensure proper dosing, but in microgravity? The crystallization is just gorgeous. absolutely beautiful

Take a look at this image, https://issnationallab.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/merck_...

Left hand side are the crystals grown on the ground. Right hand side is 0g.

That change made it possible to turn it into a safe injectable that patients could take at home. And they were able to recreate those conditions on Earth, https://issnationallab.org/iss360/merck-lab-publishes-pembro...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6889310/

This is more of a scientist said at a conference to another scientist kind of story, but apparently, they got some seed crystals from the ISS that are now used on Earth.

https://techconnectworld.com/World2025/a.php?i=602

You can do a lot more than make just seed crystals. It turns out that cells in our body are inside of a 3D environment with forces / tension acting in all directions. When you smoosh these in a lab (very literally) and try to observe how a drug behaves in a model cell / model organ, then it doesn't have the same physical constraints acting on it. BUT in 0g that's different. In 0g, cells behave slightly more similarly to how they behave in vivo and that could be a huge difference maker for drug discovery.

One breakthrough drug alone is worth more to humanity than what the ISS has cost across its lifespan.

https://iafastro.directory/iac/paper/id/89939/abstract-pdf/I...

Quite a bit of money have been raised on the premise that certain things can be easier to make in space than on earth due to gravity, which creates sedimentation

Semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, solar cell crystals, and artificial organs are on the short list. The International space station actually has done some experiments on this premise with promising results

I wonder where this leaves Varda? Tough to win when your ride is also your competitor.

One of the most interesting things about SpaceX, they just keep adding to their stack of internal capabilities. And with those capabilities, more and more things become doable for them that most can't do.

Don‘t forget that for some experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallturm_Bremen is a viable low-cost option.

Here is something that I never imagined there was a use case for. Anyone has any idea of the commercial needs for such a device?

It sounds like a super villain weapon.

If you manufacture there how do you recover it?

This is amazing. Especially for biotech. A robot can do biotech in microgravity.

Just reading the headline I was expecting this to be some sort of health subscription

i trust dan gelbart who is very skeptical that there are many really viable uses of manufacturing in space

Here's the thing I might not love Elon or everything he does and there are plenty of things to disagree with him about and I won't comment on him as a person

But I remember watching live when they launched a Tesla into Orbit, was it dumb, was it pointless and potentially wasteful? Sure, but that moment seeing humanity once again reach out to the stars I could feel it deep in my bones the space race was starting again.

Sure have lots of problems down here but the eternally yearning of humanity to extend out our hands to grasp the cosmos, to touch heaven is a pursuit I think highly worthwhile.

It would be nice if SpaceX published GNSS pseudodistance/carrier phase from all Starlink satellites. It would give excellent realtime tomographic information about the ionosphere...

This sounds cool but I don't think I can eat microgravity.

You can hate this man but he is doing things others don't even dream about. He almost makes them look easy.

Looks cool and if they could make chips in space, it will be beyond crazy. It will be over time and way over budget but in the end will be insanely profitable.

Why is it called microgravity and not freefall? Cus afaik you are experiencing almost the same force of gravity as you would on the surface, you are just constantly falling.

worlds most expensive colocation rack

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