[Farnborough International Airshow FIA 2022] Space Forge - Space manufacturing

Hi there, I’m Christina MacLeod, I’m thebusiness development and marketing officer at Space Forge.  
So we’re launching the world’s first returnable and reusable satellite platform.  

At Space Forge we discovered that while earth is a wonderful place to live,

it’s actually a terrible place to manufacture things and that’s why we look to the space environment to not only manufacture new components in space but also improve current products on earth.

In space we realized that access to high purity vacuums, low temperatures and microgravity make for better components.  

With microgravity you can actually create larger grains which is very beneficial for lots of metals as well as semiconductors,

so in the electronic sector with a high purity vacuum you can actually create components that are contaminant free,
without need for vacuum pumps which are quite expensive and quite often fail.

Additionally, with low temperatures you can access the space environment very quickly for close to absolute zero, without the use of cryogenics or anything.

One key use case is semiconductors, so while semiconductors are made on an everyday basis around the world,

they’re actually quite difficult to manufacture perfectly here on earth.

And that’s for the reasons I listed before.
In space you can create semiconductors with larger grain boundaries which make them stronger, more durable and also just more efficient.

And so in space you can manufacture them to such a high degree that you don’t require a heat sink or heat pump if semiconductors are being used in something like a telecommunications tower.  

So with semiconductors if you create them more perfectly they have a lower coefficient heat, coefficient across the entire product.

And so if you install that in say a geostationary satellite or a telecoms tower, that removes the the need for heat sinks and heat pumps,

which means you can actually halve the telecom payload mass.
Sustainability is a huge focus at Space Forge and that’s why not only are we manufacturing materials in space that help life on earth,

but we’re also returning satellites for the first time ever.

So next year our first heat shield and capture system will be capturing a satellite just off the coast of Wales.