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UK company sends factory with 1,000C furnace into space

bbc.co.uk

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Re: UK company sends factory with 1,000C furnace into space

#41

Post by pfdietz »

imtringued wrote: post #28
rokkamokka wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the primary benefit the lack of gravity?

You can reduce metals through vacuum pyrolysis at much lower temperatures without a reducing agent if you have a vacuum. This could make industrial scale processing of steel relatively easy on the moon.

Reducing ferric oxide to magnetite, perhaps, but I think if you tried that with ferrous oxide you'd get iron vapor coming off along with the oxygen.

An issue with any high temperature process is things start evaporating. This is part of why carbothermal reduction of aluminum oxide doesn't work: at the required temperature aluminum oxide is volatile.

(There are thermochemical water splitting technologies that exploit partially reducing transition or rare earth oxides at high temperature, then reacting them with steam at a bit lower temperature to make hydrogen. I believe cerium oxides are the current best approach there, although still not competitive.)

Re: UK company sends factory with 1,000C furnace into space

#42

Post by adventured »

mkl wrote: post #34
meindnoch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this is not manufacturing chips in space *crisps It's from the UK.

Chips are definitely a thing in the UK. Like French fries but usually chunkier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_and_chips

The chunkier fries are akin to what the US calls steak fries and are very common in the US as well.

Re: UK company sends factory with 1,000C furnace into space

#43

Post by pfdietz »

willis936 wrote: post #31
HPsquared wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like a vacuum flask, I imagine. Vacuum is a very good insulator already and you minimise radiative heat transfer (infrared glow) by making a surface shiny and metallic usually (low emissivity)

Good electrical conductors are also good thermal conductors. It's a fun system challenge to minimize what needs to be hot, but some things will have to get hot. It could be reduced to a photodiode, transistor, and a relay. But how do you get the power to the heater in a compact way?

One notable exception to this is superconductors. One might naively think that because superconductors have zero electrical resistance, they also have zero thermal resistance. But this is wrong (sorry, Larry Niven)! The superconducting charge carriers (Cooper Pairs) have zero entropy, so they can't carry heat. Thermal conductivity of a superconducting material drops when it becomes superconductive.

I believe high Tc superconductors have been used (or at least proposed to be used) as current leads for carrying current into low Tc superconductors from somewhat higher temperature normal conductors.

Re: UK company sends factory with 1,000C furnace into space

#45

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

whynotmaybe wrote: post #38
mkl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chips are definitely a thing in the UK. Like French fries but usually chunkier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_and_chips

Which is called Fish and Chips in Canada, even though it's served with fries.

I heard some restaurant getting sued for selling "fish and chips" without fish, but I don't remember how it ended

Re: UK company sends factory with 1,000C furnace into space

#46

Post by wizzwizz4 »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #29
PunchyHamster wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason to do it with current processes. It could possibly reduce defect rate/increase yields but I'm not sure impurities are even leading cause now. But we might discover other uses, that's what science is.

No way. This is being done because there’s a predictable path to profitability. It’s not just random shot in the dark science you can sometimes see in academia. It’s just this path isn’t clear to us laymen… I know because launching into space isn’t something that will be done just for science

Hubble Space Telescope. James Webb Space Telescope.

Re: UK company sends factory with 1,000C furnace into space

#47

Post by HPsquared »

aeonik wrote: post #33
willis936 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good electrical conductors are also good thermal conductors. It's a fun system challenge to minimize what needs to be hot, but some things will have to get hot. It could be reduced to a photodiode, transistor, and a relay. But how do you get the power to the heater in a compact way?

Diamond is my favorite exception to this, one of the best thermal conductor and insulators.

Boron nitride too. I guess the thermal vibrations transmit well through a stiff microstructure.

Re: UK company sends factory with 1,000C furnace into space

#48

Post by MomsAVoxell »

This is really, really exciting. The moment this spark ignites, it will herald a new reality for industrialization of space, and I for one cannot wait to see it succeed.

One of the things I truly believe will elevate our species is space industrialization. If, in 20 years or so, we send a fleet of space furnaces to 16 Psyche [1], there is a very real possibility that we will be able to move a lot of Earths heavy industrial processes to space. Can you imagine - 3D printed Starship hulls being made from the immense resources of 16 Psyche?

Literal pallets of iPhones being landed from near earth orbit.

It sounds like whacky science fiction now, and for now it really is just that, but the launch and successful mission of Space Forge and other companies like it bring us all a single step closer to seeing that reality play out.

I truly hope we can survive long enough to move heavy metal industry to space, and use that event to return the Earth to a garden state. It’s a long shot, but oh what a beautiful world it would be in 100 years time if this dream can be kept alive, and actually achieved.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_Psyche

Re: UK company sends factory with 1,000C furnace into space

#50

Post by boothby »

fsh wrote: post #15
georgefrowny wrote: post #10

4000 times purer seems a questionable claim to me. 4000 times purer then what? Current Earthbound state of the art? A guy in shed with a vacuum pump and a heater? On what axis: crystal defects or contamination? High vacuums aren't at all impossible on Earth and silicon boules are already single crystals. What exactly about their process permits such a huge quality improvement?

The best silicon single crystals still contain impurities at the 1E-11 level. This project is about doing crystal growing in low gravity (the ultra-high purity is only achieved due to the growth process). The vacuum of space is a lot worse than what can be achieved in the lab, especially in low orbits.

What I'm struggling with is the hard radiation, which causes defects and even impurities even if you start with isotopically pure feedstock
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