Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Space Ports - Supply Chains and 3-D Printing Discussion


Many scientists working at NASA had always considered the space shuttle more of a space truck. In a way that's true, it had a giant cargo bay and that is what it was used for. Was that really a waste? Perhaps not, because if we are to have lunar colonies and Martian colonies then we are going to need a rather robust supply chain, and we are going to need space trucks which can go back and forth. The space shuttle is a decent design, and although it may not be the final design of the space truck, we sure learned a lot in the process.
Don't think for one minute that that knowledge and technology or those areas of science will go to waste, you'd be mistaken. In the future there will be spaceports with a space distribution system. We will also be in the age of 3-D printing. However many of the molecules which will be assimilated at perhaps the nano-scale for many of the things that they make off world may not be available on those planets, or we will not have the mining operations necessary to dig up those materials there. They will have to be brought from somewhere else. Perhaps in giant hoppers on space cargo vessels, and they will be a very valuable commodity.
There was an interesting article in the Economist March 12, 2012 titled; "Ports in the Storm - Building Euro-Zone Competitiveness - Portugal needs to privatize its ports to reap the full benefits of its location. The latest in our series on reforming Europe's economics," and accompanying this piece was a map of all the sea routes which show Portugal's obvious strategic location as a hub port. I couldn't agree more, and it also noted the volume of trade coming through their three main ports.
Now then consider a future with people living on the Moon in human colonies. We will need distribution hubs. Perhaps orbiting warehouses, and places where the gravity dwell is much less than that of Earth to save on the efficiency moving products to and from. We may have satellite warehouses at Lagrange points as well. We may also have hospitals, space hotels, and Earth defense systems there in case we have to take out an NEO Near Earth Object such as an asteroid on its way to hit our planet or Moon. Yes, if we have colonies on the Moon we must also protect them from incoming objects at high rates of speed.
Have you ever noticed all the craters up there? Then you see what I mean. What I'm saying is we will need a superior supply chain, and it will exist in the future in a new era of 3-D printing. We will not be taking everything fully manufactured from Earth, much of the manufacturing will be done there on site, using materials, molecules, and alloys perhaps put together at the molecular level, and 3-D printed from there. Please consider all this and think on it.

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