The technological challenge of the day is the very first factory in space. If all goes as planned, it will be in orbit in just over two years. This crazy project is French, and it has conquered all the major space players, from NASA to CNES via Elon Musk’s Space X.
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It is, in this technical and industrial adventure, to create products with very high added value which are impossible to manufacture here below or almost, all thanks to this factory satellite called REV1. PWhy a factory in orbit ? To enjoy weightlessness that‘we do not know how to reproduce, on a large scale, on Earth, except for a few tens of seconds only in the planes which make it possible to achieve what‘these are called parabolic flights.
Three sectors are interested
This weightless factory concerns three sectors basically. First, the‘agriculture, with an obsession to feed the planet despite global warmingt climatic. Then thehas medicine, the‘pharmaceutical industry and more broadly the life sciences; in L‘space, stem cells, for example, grow ten times faster. Finally, the‘industry, for new materials such as a fluorine-based optical fiber that is much more conductive at certain frequencies but very difficult to manufacture on Earth; one meter of this fiber costs several hundreds of thousands of‘euros. As for the alloys produced in the‘space, without any impurities, they are close to perfection.
This future factory in orbit will look like a very small space shuttle since‘she isst 8 times shorter. 4 meters only, and no d‘wing. REV1 will remain in orbit for 2 months before returning to Earth with its production. All up there, she will go‘dock to a structure made up of solar panels to s‘power: a kind of space service station. And all the space will be optimized on board REV1 since‘he does‘there will be no astronauts.
See you at the end of 2025
I‘french companycaise at the‘origin of the REV1 does not come out of nowhere. Space Cargo Unlimited was co-founded by Nicolas Gaume, l‘one of the pioneers of video games in France with Kalisto. It is today‘today, in parallel, Microsoft’s world reference for everything related to space. And with his start-up, he has already succeeded‘sending 12 bottles into orbitIslands of Château Petrus 2000 vintage and 320 vine shoots, which spent 438 days in the‘lSS, the international space station. See you at the end of 2025 for the launch of REV1. The factory ship, without humans on board, is planned for about twenty missions.