over the last decade private space companies like spacex have brought the cost of space travel down
significantly opening up a whole new frontier for others to literally reach for the stars
in fact space may very well become the future of manufacturing at least that's
what the founders of startup varda space industries believe their goal is to create
literal space factories so how exactly does the space factory work and more importantly
if we already have factories here on earth what's the point will these factories truly
become the future of commerce or is it just another big flashy but ultimately
useless endeavor without these questions deserve a deeper dive here on tuba davinci
special thanks to klimworx for sponsoring this video be a part of the solution by removing carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere with climax we all know the idea of space commerce has had a thriving
history in science fiction images of sigourney weaver and her crew of space truckers getting
slowly picked off by a drooling xenomorph may come to mind but the truth is that the final frontier
has been a hot spot for research development and innovation for over half a century stretching
all the way back to 1969 during the soyuz 6 missions where russian cosmonauts first performed
welding experiments in space but like so much of the history of space travel outside of
government-funded research very few people have truly had the opportunity to take full advantage
of all the benefits that space has to offer however that's all beginning to change thanks to
private companies like spacex which have made good on their promise to bring the cost of space travel
down by a factor of 10. now private companies who never imagined space as a possibility are suddenly
dreaming to infinity and beyond one company poised to take full advantage of this new space age
is a startup called varda space industries company co-founder will brewey spent six years working
for spacex as a hardware engineer working for crew dragon and spacecraft systems officer of
mission control for eight iss missions brewey and his partner dillian asperov have a simple goal
to build scalable economically viable manufacturing facilities
in space the company which formed in november of 2020 is already set to launch its first vessel
into orbit and abroad spacex's falcon 9 rocket in 2023 with a second launch already planned for that
year as well as a third in 2024 the vehicles will be outfitted with two varda made modules a micro
gravity manufacturing module and a re-entry module though the process will take place in space the
principles are actually pretty grounded companies will approach varda with a product that will be
partially produced in space provide requirements and varda will design the pod to make it happen
from there varda will take the raw materials and launch them in a self-contained expendable pod
though the long-term goal is to make reusable pods to avoid more space trash once the process
is finished the pod returns safely to earth with all the products ready for sale and distribution
the main reason all of this is possible is thanks to falcon 9's milestone rideshare missions it's
essentially uber in space multiple companies share the cost of going to space which makes it more
affordable for everyone spacex even promises to eventually bring down prices to as low as
1 million dollars per individual customer for up to 200 kilograms of payload into synchronous orbit
so great we have a cost-effective infrastructure for launching more stuff into space but you
might be wondering why do we even need space manufacturing don't we already have plenty of
manufacturing here on earth turns out there are actually multiple benefits to making things in
space thanks to research conducted in places like the iss we know that there are countless products
that can actually be developed and manufactured in space that would be incredibly difficult and
expensive if not entirely impossible here on earth the key is unlocking the benefits of microgravity
something that can only be found in space for sustained periods of time products like artificial
organs an artificial heart for example with its four empty chambers and intricately structured
muscle tissue is virtually impossible to create here on the ground tissues printed with runny bio
inks made of gels and stem cells often collapse under their own weight requiring scientists to
add either toxic stabilizing chemicals or build some sort of scaffolding printing the organs
in space would allow scientists to use pure bio inks with the fragile structure simply floating
in microgravity this innovation alone could have major impacts here on earth where over 120
000 people in the u.s alone are currently waiting for transplants hoping for organs they may likely
never see due to donor shortages but the benefits don't stop here everything from fiber optic
cables to silicon wafers carbon nanotubes and eventually artificial meat are all incredibly
challenging and expensive to produce here on earth particularly because they are all highly prone
to contamination due to microscopic dust particles that are nearly impossible to fully eradicate even
in the most sterile environments space however is already a naturally occurring vacuum chamber
free of all contaminants before we get back to the show i got a feeling you're like our sponsor
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davinci to give the gift of carbon dioxide removal this holiday season huge thanks to climb works
and all of you for supporting the show in 2014 nasa conducted experiments that revealed that
bodily tissues grown in space experienced 10 times better tissue quality and size
zbland fiber optic cables saw improvements of a hundred x compared to silicon fiber made on earth
and the wake shield project which utilized a four meter large manufacturing platform using the ultra
vacuum of space to make thin film semiconductors saw improvements 10 000 times better than those
made here on earth those improvements alone seem totally worth the effort and investment but let's
talk cost how much does it compare to making these things on earth as we mentioned thanks
to spacex launch costs per kilogram have dropped roughly 13 x from 1980 to today varda co-founder
dalian asparov estimates further decreases of less than one thousand dollars per kilogram with the
both hope that we could even see costs between 50 and a hundred dollars per kilogram by 2025.
those last figures may involve a bit of wishful thinking but less than 30 years
ago even the thought of cheaper private space flight was also seen as pure science fiction
another main driver for space manufacturing is the cost of self-sustained factories themselves here's
where things get interesting on earth the word factory conjures up images of massive industrial
parks taking up huge amounts of space requiring immense amounts of capital this isn't how things
would work in space instead raw materials would be launched in small pods that would spend a short
amount of time in space their automated processes would kick in as soon as the pod reaches orbit
before returning to earth here there may be more of a trade-off where the cost of building massive
factories on earth could be reallocated to launch cost there is a question of payload optimization
and this is where we still may need to see more improvement before this endeavor can truly take
off launch costs are based on dollars per kilogram of both the raw materials and the
space factory if the pot is say 90 machinery and only 10 materials that's not very efficient
but if the pod only accounts for about 50 or less of the total launch weight it becomes more cost
effective the final piece of the economic puzzle is the overall value right now this is a bit of
an experiment as the process has never been done before but there is some promise in the fact that
there are many products that either can't be made on earth or can't be made well without creating
expensive factories that try to mimic the values of space anyway because these products we made at
a much higher quality it's possible that the value they generate could easily offset the cost of the
voyage to space and back the final benefit space factories would provide is bringing us one step
closer to becoming a multi-planetary species having the capacity to create in space will almost
certainly launch us literally to the next stages of our evolution as a species yes there will be
real economic questions with space factories but regardless we are living in a very exciting time
space travel is moving out of the realm of science fiction and into our daily lives in a very real
impactful way and it's only going to get better but let us know what you think are you excited
about the idea of making things in space or is it just another fantasy that will eventually come
crashing down sound off in the comments section below all right so that is a look at varda
industries and their plans to build factories in space when i saw this script come up i was
really excited to understand why on earth we would actually want to do this but artificial organs
that one alone to me screams yeah this probably should be funded and might be the norm in about
20 years currently these are the sorts of things with biotechnology and bioengineering that are
really difficult to do here on earth but what do you guys think i'd love to know what you guys
think thank you so much for watching as always if you want to be a rockstar supporter of the show
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the team thank you so much as always take a look around there are some other videos we think you're
going to love and i'm rick youtube davinci and just remember the future is going to be awesome