alt Hacker NewsHere is something that I never imagined there was a use case for. Anyone has any idea of the commercial needs for such a device?
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There's a lot of fundamental science to be done in space; some forms of crystal are much easier to grow, chemical reactions and biological interactions etc. etc. For reference, it wasn't long ago NASA was trying to figure out if spiders could form webs in space.
The primary one I've been sold on is types of crystal growth is just better up there. But due to the excess expense, the only thing that fits the bill is experimental edge case pharmaceuticals that have massive price tags that insurance mostly covers.
If the automation improves far beyond what we currently have available, maybe this means microchip manufacturing in the future, but we aren't at all there yet from the fab side of the equation.
This is an old idea, dating back to at least the 1940s. Many experiments have already been done in microgravity environments.
In the 1960s, they used sounding rockets to do experiments on how molten metals solidify in microgravity, with manufacturing applications in mind.
In the 1970s, they ran experiments, also on sounding rockets, on melting and solidifying materials without letting them touch a container: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19840059952
More recently, many microgravity experiments have been performed on the International Space Station. Experiments were done on protein crystal growth aboard the ISS in 2000, just a couple of years after it was launched. (I think it took some time to get the experimental facilities up and running.)
Here’s an assortment of links on the subject, starting with a good overview:
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/applications-within-re...
https://issnationallab.org/research-and-science/space-resear...
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/the-benefits-of-microg...
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001550
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20150023126
https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/manufacturingscience/...
Material science and manufacturing are two that have always seemed interesting to me, particularly monocrystalline stuff like semiconductors, optics, and metallurgy.