Assembly will be required — in space
Webster’s commercial space company Nanoracks plans to send an experiment into space in late 2020 to test a technique for cutting metal in zero gravity, an important step toward the company’s goal of manufacturing inspace structures for human habitats or for robotically-operated research facilities.
This technique, called friction milling, uses a drill head that spins at 3,000 revolutions per minute. That’s fast enough to melt the metal and cause it to separate. And since it’s melting as opposed to cutting, the metal sticks to the structure and doesn’t create
shards that could become dangerous space debris capable of puncturing spacesuits or habitats.
“This technology could prove so important as both industry and NASA look to find the most cost-effective vehicles and programs that will bring humans to the moon, and soon to Mars,” Nanoracks CEO Jeffrey Manber said in a statement. “This mission is just step one of many for Nanoracks.”
Nanoracks was founded in 2009, initially helping universities and corporations get experiments, such as biological tests or whiskey aging, onto the International Space Station. Its focus has expanded over the years, as the company began attaching space telescopes, sensors and electronics to the station’s exterior and launching small satellites from an airlock on the space station.
A more recent endeavor is creating its own airlock, called the Bishop Airlock, to increase the number and size of satellites and experiments that could exit the space station. The airlock is also set to launch in 2020 and will become the first complex commercially developed and privately owned element on the space station.
The airlock, measuring six feet in diameter and expected to weigh about 2,500 pounds at launch, is small enough to build on earth and launch into space. But for larger structures, which would require more fuel and a more powerful rocket engine to escape Earth’s gravity, it would be more cost effective to send construction materials into space and assemble them there.
Nanoracks’ experiment will be attached to the outside of a rocket launching to deploy myriad satellites and experiments. After the other payloads are released into space, the rocket will begin its descent toward Earth’s atmosphere. That’s when Nanoracks will start its experiment, having roughly 30 minutes to an hour before the rocket burns up while reentering the atmosphere, said Adrian Mangiuca, commerce director for Nanoracks.
Nanoracks will cut three different metal composites attached to the rocket. Each material represents the exterior of three different rockets.
Under a plan that Nanoracks has spent years outlining with NASA and space technology company Maxar Technologies, a spent rocket’s upper stage could be turned into a habitat in which humans could live in or for robots to conduct experiments.
“Developing the capability to repurpose otherwise throwaway space hardware that cost a bundle to put in space will help increase the probability that we can eventually develop a viable ‘inspace’ economy,” said David Alexander, director of the Rice Space Institute at Rice University.
Repurposing the rocket would require cutting open its exterior to access the fuel tank, which is the part of the rocket that could be pumped with air and pressurized to resemble an Earth-like atmosphere. Fuel tanks have hatches that can be opened, so they would not need to be cut.
If this test is successful, Nanoracks hopes to cut open an actual rocket structure. And then it wants to create its own outpost out of spent rockets that could orbit Earth or live in deep space.
“The next step for us is really to own our own platform,” Mangiuca said, “and this is a major step in that direction.”