Re:Factories in Space
by gshubert17 on Tuesday May 30, 2023 @11:59AM
(#36126410)
ISRU - In-Situ Resource Utilization
The farther humans go into deep space, the more important it will be to generate products with local materials, a practice called in-situ resource utilization.
You need to solve the material-cost problem first. Either a space gun / elevator or ISRU. Otherwise, assembling on the ground is cheaper for everything but the most massive objects. (At which point a constellation or fleet usually makes more sense.)
> would allow to use well tested rockets to launch smaller parts instead of trying to build a huge rocket at once
Bigger rockets have moderate economies of scale. Optimising for a particular launch vehicle doesn’t make sense in the long run.