One of the goods is a device made by Made In Space (MIS), about the size of a microwave oven, which MIS will use to make more efficient fiber under microgravity conditions. Fiber optics support most of the world's Internet and television systems, MIS believes that optical fibers manufactured in space can handle more data traffic and can send signals over longer distances with shorter latency.
Figure: The International Space Station may become the cradle of new manufacturing
The device, the third device the Silicon Valley company sent to the International Space Station and the 'first industrial-purpose space device' said by MIS president and CEO Andrew Rush, said: 'Instead of using space as a mountain of bounce signals, we are creating the environment, and this is the first change we've made in interacting with space.'
When the device is connected to the space station, MIS will order it to begin manufacturing nearly a new type of fiber, called ZBLAN. After the mission is complete, the astronaut can unplug the device and place it in the Dragon capsule, Returning to Earth in January next year, MIS said in a press release that making optical fiber in a microgravity environment will dramatically improve its performance. "Rush said they plan to start selling materials made in space back to Earth and tested by MIS .
In order to send short-range data, telcos usually use cables that carry electrical signals, but at longer distances it costs less to use laser pulses to impose quartz glass fibers. The world's criss-crossing mesh lines are only a few tens of microns in diameter, The thickness of the hair is quite comparable, and they run between every ocean and the continent.They are expensive, not because of their high cost of manufacture, but because they are not perfect and even the best-in-class glass is not 100% transparent. These cables are formed under gravity and form crystals in the glass.
As a result of this crystal formation, the light gets weaker over longer distances, which means that the signal must be multiplied several times in its path.These boosters are called repeaters and are expensive to install. At the same time, they also increase the latency of each transfer, and although the delay is only in milliseconds, it feels very long for a computer engaged in financial transactions or streaming media data.
Experiments on zero-gravity spacecraft have shown that if these fibers are made without gravity, crystal formation can be reduced by a factor of 10. Less crystalline structure means that the fiber can transmit information over a longer distance, which is what When MIS asked ZBLAN, Rush said: 'You can lay cables under the Atlantic without adding a repeater.' 'Typically, every 50 or 50 100 km will add a repeater, repeater means less signal delay less.He also said that optical fiber will significantly increase the bandwidth, the transmission of data than the silicon optical fiber 50 to 100 times.
If MIS can provide space fiber, it could also help telcos make more money. "Rush said: 'When we can mass-produce ZBLAN in kilobytes, we can be the same or higher Price to sell them. '
Space manufacturing was not as fresh as you imagined: As early as 1969, astronauts began welding in space and eventually studied the behavior of liquid metals in a weightless state, but Ph.D. students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Andrew Owens said: "The point is that it was too expensive at the time, and there was one not-to-be-overlooked possibility: If something went wrong, you would lose everything while it was firing."
Owens now believes that the rocket industry is growing rapidly with increased launch reliability and cost. For example, NASA often allows other companies to join their launch programs, which makes it easier for companies like MIS to take on their own Falcon 9 rocket launch of 62 million US dollars cost.
Rush said the company is already designing a follow-on plant for ZBLAN and hopes to install longer-lasting production facilities on the International Space Station or on different commercial modules to make space fiber, which Owens believes may eventually open the commercial space economy A big step because 'they are making something you can not make on Earth.'