#108 - Josh Western - Space Forge - Growing materials in space

Well, talk to me about materials because I think when I first heard about the concept, I was quite excited by it because I think it makes sense, I guess, to create materials in space.

But tell me more, like what are we trying to solve in the first place and why is space a better environment to create materials?

So to understand why space is a better environment, you have to understand why Earth isn't a suitable environment.

And Earth is a wonderful place to live.

We have gravity, which keeps us here.

We have a dense ambient atmosphere, which we can breathe.

And albeit rising, we have a fairly consistent global temperature, which just about keeps us warm enough if you're living in the right kind of latitudes.

the challenge that we have is those three environmental constraints work against almost any industrial process so if you're producing dried pasta if you are manufacturing steel if you are trying to produce an advanced compound semiconductor you have to work against the constraints of this planet.

So you have to remove gravity from the equation, or you have to try and remove atmosphere from the equation, or you need to go to extreme temperatures for those industrial processes to succeed at making steel, semiconductors, whatever.

In space, you don't have any of those challenges.

So you have an absence of gravity.

It's not quite zero, but it's very, very low.

You have an incredibly high purity vacuum.

which is not filled with contaminants that our atmosphere just has present.

And just depending on which way you're orientated, you can access plus 250 Celsius or minus 250 Celsius.

And indeed, if you're in the right orbit, your platform will be experiencing both at the same time.

Those three things.

basically give you a running head start at almost any industrial process.

Now, I am not proposing we manufacture plastic cuts in space.

That would be insane.

But for incredibly high-grade materials that require exceptional purity, it makes sense.

So in the frame of something like a semiconductor, a semiconductor produced in space has the opportunity to be 4,000 times higher in purity compared to the ground.

What that means in real terms is effectively that chip would consume less than 50% of its current energy.

And if you can deploy that at scale, then I would like to be in a position where I can effectively halve everybody's energy bills, but in a way that means that we can continue to advance civilization and humanity without having the impact on the planet that it currently has.