> SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand...

The launch business is tiny compared to what's possible when you can do large volume industrial research and manufacturing in microgravity.

I take the approach that space right now is like the computer industry in the early 1970s. We're about to have our microprocessor moment with fully reusable rockets.

This means ridiculously cheap access to space which could yield entirely new industries in biotech, semiconductors and other areas of research we haven't even imagined.

We're only done the tiniest amount of research so far and have found put that you can grow much larger and purer crystals, antibiotics work in unpredicted ways and a hundred other examples of interesting areas of research.

If launch costs are commodity, then do something with all that capacity. Cisco may have struggled when computer server prices fell, but that made companies like Google and Facebook possible. We're now living in a world that benefits tremendously from one thing becoming a commodity.

The thing is even if SpaceX gets actually cost down to ridiculously low prices it's still going to be extremely expensive and very very hard. We have practically speaking no experience manufacturing in space, the only thing that's been made have been small test quantities of ZBLAN fiber and until we get asteroid mining and refining setup the extra cost of lifting all the raw materials is going to make manufacturing in space only viable for a few small things with high margins of return.

At least for semiconductors you won't have to haul up all that high vacuum equipment :)

You'd still need it LEO at 500km varies between 10-700 nPa and UHV is a max of 100 nPa. It's too variable an environment to really develop chips in due to space weather and the variability in the extreme thin reaches of the atmosphere in Earth orbit.

What could we be able to manufacture in space in the next 15/20 years in your opinion?

The only think I really know of is ZBLAN fiber because that has a definite benefit to space manufacture and a large profit margin to justify the lift costs of the base material. I think until we get space refining figured out it's going to be hard to manufacture anything because of the high lift costs. Modern manufacturing also depends on a large amount of equipment and chemicals that will have to be redesigned for zero-G [0] and whole supply chains of chemicals either lifted dry and recreated or created from scratch in space.

I think the first things we'll really make in space will be super structures and pressure vessels because those are the simplest things to make and the materials don't require a massive supply chain. We could even gain a lot just by lifting up generic stock from Earth (metal powders, sheet stock that could be formed into tubes, or just a lot of generic tube stock [1]) and learning how to assemble them via machine in space. It would let us build larger stations or telescopes than we could launch from the ground.

For example if we build a super structure in space we could launch a lot of large inflatable modules to fill it in with that would be mechanically simpler and lighter because they don't have to bear and transmit the thrust force just support their own mass under thrust.

[0] Which increases the amount of benefit needed to justify redesigning an entire chip fab for example to function in zero-G.

[1] Though lifting tubes has the problem that there's a lot of wasted space in a stack of tubes which is one of the problems we're trying to avoid by building vehicles in space to begin with.

imo the most lucrative thing to manufacture would be parts for larger orbital stations and for satellites/rockets. The most expensive part of space is getting there - if you could manufacture the payload (aka body of the rocket) in orbit, there would be no need for a stage 1 or 2.

> I've worked in aerospace and have been reading HN for over a decade.

> Here's some adult advice, for both the OP and HN in general.

> Space is a waste of time unless you're a government or a bored billionaire. Objects are too far, and lift is now a commodity.

> (SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand, hence their polluting the sky with micro satellites now.)

You are misidentifying the source of revenue. Space, like military equipment, is an incredible market for corporations equipped to operate in. There are huge government subsidies, private-public partnerships designed to assist research and development, there's an unsatiable market to offload excess production in (government demand), you get to profit off of commercial spin-off products. SpaceX is on the receiving end of all of this. Furthermore, the public does not care what it is that you are doing exactly. That's important because of all the tax money involved. The moment your enterprise has a significant impact on the public ordinary people will scrutinize it. That's bad for business. Even more so when your business depends the government which is somewhat accountable to the public.

>Space is a waste of time unless you're a government or a bored billionaire.

Unless you are 100% self sufficient, you rely on space to live. Freight logistics are reliant on space (GPS), farming (GPS optimized planting and harvesting), air travel (GPS), using your phone to get directions somewhere (GPS). Then all of the weather satellites, satellites are rapdily gaining use in archaeology revealing unknown sites far faster than boots on the ground can, etc etc so on and so forth.

Gobs and gobs of money are waiting to be made in space with current and future technology. Some quick near-future possibilities:

- Space tourism

- Seed vaults on the moon for companies and countries

- Archival data storage on the moon

- All matter of material sciences research and possibly production of materials with qualities that we can not replicate in an Earth-based production facility (think crystals and crystalline structures)

- Extremely isolated biological related experiments, such as genetic engineering, which could be be done in complete safety in a self-contained habitat remotely, with no chance of any of the material spreading outside of the lab unlike on earth

> Unless you are 100% self sufficient, you rely on space to live. Freight logistics are reliant on space (GPS), farming (GPS optimized planting and harvesting), air travel (GPS), using your phone to get directions somewhere (GPS).

Perhaps you don't recall, but we somehow managed to deliver freight, grow crops, fly planes and find our way to places long before GPS satellites were a thing.

Space-based systems may be a great convenience at times, but they're hardly essential to my life.

>Perhaps you don't recall, but we somehow managed to deliver freight, grow crops, fly planes and find our way to places long before GPS satellites were a thing.

Yes and if you are older than 30 you likely remember when everything said "4-6 weeks delivery" not "same day" or even "2-3 day delivery'. That's right, even in the 1990s if you ordered something 4-6 weeks was a perfectly acceptable (and realistic) delivery time frame.

You also had a fraction of the flights that you do now. GPS for aviation right out of the gate increases fuel efficiency of any given flight as well as safety.

GPS went fully operational in 1995, with 2 billion less mouths to feed as well. Take GPS away from farming and you'll plant less efficiently and crop losses will increase both of which will drive prices up. A lot of the larger farms actually heavily rely on automation, assisted by GPS, for both planting and harvesting.

This is a single technology using 24 satellites that is space-based, that has affected virtually every industry in the world.

Imagine what other space-based or space-derived technologies might one day exist. Imagine what amount of change they might make on civilization. Imagine what sort of profits they might generate.

Companies don't stop operations because they're too successful. It might be that demand for launch services won't rise with falling prices the way that SpaceX expects. That might mean they won't recoup the costs of developing the Starship and they go bankrupt. But space launch is still a $100s of billions a year industry and whoever is running SpaceX will still be making that, even if it's Elon's creditors after a bankruptcy.

This shows a complete lack of knowledge about how most industries evolved in the past. Every industry was in the phase you describe the space industry in.

History is full of example of industries where no-one could imagine the potential before it got really cheap. From mobile phones to cars. Once something gets cheap the opportunities explode. Which is SpaceX's plan.

At $20/kg a space hotel would be possible to build, even a moon hotel. I'd imagine at some point it becomes seriously viable as an alternative to a luxury holiday in the maldives. I for one am interested. Or - apparently much better repeaters can be built in 0g for fiber optic cables. Already there's talk of factories in space. Did you think of that one?

But it's almost silly to speculate because it's impossible to imagine the industries that will be created.

Exactly, you're not going to have the first mover advantage if you are waiting for someone to be ahead of you.

But if you are someone like lockhead you have money to wait for spacex to fizzle out, headhunt their talent, and outperform with your military industrial complex connections and 70 years of working in aerospace.

Yeah, just like Ford and GM waited out Tesla to fail... (and SpaceX is profitable as opposed to Tesla)

Tesla made a profit of $143 million in Q3 2019 on record deliveries

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/10/tesla-made-a-profit-of-...

" lift is now a commodity ... SpaceX will probably end up shutting down"

I take this that the price of orbital launch is insignificant compared to the cost of preparing and operating the cargo.

Are there any signs that space born cargo with lower capex and opex (and hence whose operators would have higher price sensitivity) would arrive?

The cost of the payload is huge today because the launch is so expensive that you have to make the most of it. If it's $25/kg to low Earth orbit, you can afford to be a lot more experimental and take a lot more risks with your cargo.

One of the few sane comments in this post. Commenting to save, thanks.

> installing ADS-B.

Can you tell me a bit more about it?

Boo, this is unnecessarily negative. Here's some cool things that are happening in entrepreneurial space.

First, SpaceX is using its reusable launch capacity combined with the StarLink constellation to dramatically lower launch costs over the next decade. Here's a nice writeup on why StarLink is important (https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/starlink-is-a-...). SpaceX is essentially using StarLink to 'soak up' all the extra, cheap launch capacity it will produce (demand generation) until the rest of the industry wakes up to this new reality. This will help SpaceX both produce fantastic profits to fund capital investments for space endeavors while also increasing the heavy launch capacity possible to space, vastly increasing commercial opportunities in the 2020s.

Another healthy space area has been nanosats and cubesats. Nanoracks (http://nanoracks.com/) has created a healthy business out of the ISS launching these, while Planet Labs (https://www.planet.com/) has created a near-earth observation constellation that is commercially doing well using these kinds of platforms. Small launch providers for nanosats and cubesats, as well as a healthy diverse ecosystem of hardware suppliers (https://blog.bliley.com/top-20-best-cubesat-satellite-manufa...), has made this an accessible area of space.

Space-based manufacturing has indeed been slower to launch. The Space Shuttle did pioneering work in showing that fiber-optic cables based on something called ZBLAN could be produced in orbit (https://upward.issnationallab.org/the-race-to-manufacture-zb...), and they are an ideal space-based manufacturing product: they are straightforward to produce in orbit, can fetch a very large price, and have a very small downmass back to earth. Made in Space has done recent pioneering work demonstrating producing ZBLAN in space (https://madeinspace.us/capabilities-and-technology/fiber-opt...). Here's a great list of other startup companies pushing forward with space based manufacturing: https://www.factoriesinspace.com/manufacturing-companies

One of the most exciting developments is Made in Space's Archinaut project (https://madeinspace.us/capabilities-and-technology/archinaut...), which promises IMHO to allow us to build complex structures in space from small-fairing rockets. Significantly, NASA recently gave a large grant to Made in Space for an Archinaut demonstrator mission in the near future (https://www.engineering.com/AdvancedManufacturing/ArticleID/...).

Not to be crass, but the last thing we need are cynical old economy space folks who have given up on moving space forward. There is a diverse, vibrant space economy under the surface if you know where to look; it's not Apollo or O'Neill cylinders (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder) in space but real companies that make real profit and move humanity forward have been quietly working behind the scenes the last two decades. Much of this is due to low-cost launch, more accessible satellite platforms like cube and nano-sats, and a NASA that is more inclined to be a market-enabler for space with programs like COTS (https://www.nasa.gov/commercial-orbital-transportation-servi...), CCDEV (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Development), and more. Rome wasn't built in a day.

> (SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand, hence their polluting the sky with micro satellites now.)

I guess morale is low at Arianespace these days ;)

Why would it? Ariane 5 is still doing reasonably good and Ariane 6 seems promising too. SpaceX needs a ton of launches to make reusable rockets financially feasible so.

It was kind of a joke but come on, Arianespace's leaders have been pretty salty about SpaceX in public so clearly there is some jealousy. And as I understand it most of the oldspace launch providers aren't significantly cheaper than SpaceX even if latter operate their rockets in expendable mode.

True that! The one thing that really sets SpaceX and Ariane Space apart if development. Less the capabilities but more the amount of politics and red tape. In that area SpaceX has a clear advantage.

I really wish Arianespace were smashing it like SpaceX. No doubt they have great engineers, if they could just be let off the leash a little.

Don't we need a bunch of "bad" investments to get the space tech to move forward faster?

Like, maybe this guy will convince a bunch of "fools" to invest, and in his path to failure, he'll find some more efficient way to... something.

Or are you saying, even if everything was efficient, there are things you can't fix, like how far away valuable stuff is, that makes it all pretty pointless?