The next revolution will come from space. The P2P aerospace revolution will incorporate hundreds of thousands of citizens into space exploration and will go far beyond what any state has been able to do so far. The first human settlers of new planets will be makers.

3D printers have reached space. The first, installed in the International Space Station, just printed its first object. The astronaut excitedly said, “It’s a big milestone, not only for NASA and Made In Space, but for humanity as a whole.” Both Neal Armstrong and “Butch” Wilmore are leaders of this unique moment, from which there is no turning back. They blazed a trail, which was as uncertain as all trails are that lead to better futures.

Forty-five years ago, the symbol of the conquest of the space was the first footprints on the moon. They marked the beginning of exploration. The faceplate that recently came out of the 3D printer has a very different purpose, that of the construction of a new world. Following this first achievement, little by little, space stations will stop being sites where everything arrives in packet-mail from the Earth, in those little compartments where all kinds of trash accumulates until they are abandoned, like we saw in Gravity.

How does a 3D printer get into space?

Jason Dunn grew up on the Gulf of Mexico, convinced that when he was big, he would work at NASA or for one of its big contractors dedicated to space exploration. But investment in the space program was shrinking little by little. The aerospace industry underwent restructuring, facilities were dismantled, hundreds of jobs were lost… being an employee of NASA didn’t seem to be the best route.

In 2006, when Dunn first heard about the new private aerospace industry, he accepted the challenge. In 2008, he created his first space business, EarthRise Space Incorporated, and participated in the Google Lunar XPrize. In 2010, he signed up at Singularity University, where he me tAaron Kemmer. Together, they decided to found Made In Space.

 

Made In Space was created with the objective of allowing humanity be an interplanetary species. The first step to achieve that objective is the possibility of building hardware in space.

A roadmap in 3 steps

It was an ambitious mission that began with a very simple goal: to reduce the cost of shipping of materials and supplies to space stations by starting industrial production in space. For this, he designed a roadmap with 3 steps: Learn how make a 3D printer work in a atmosphere of microgravity; Design a printer; Launch it.

And so was that Dunn came to NASA, not as a hopeful employee, but as a project member. After 30,000 hours of testing and 400 orbits, the Zero Gravity printer was ready to go into space. This past September, it was launched to the International Space Station, to be installed on its base after a long trip. After some minor adjustments, a few days ago, it finished printing the first object, a faceplate that proudly bears the logo of Made In Space… and that of NASA.

When someone asks Dunn what his are plans for the next ten years, you knows the answer will be impressive. He assures us that the next Industrial Revolution will be in space.

Made in Space is the beginning of a change in the surroundings of programming and design, a dizzying development of free repositories to print all kinds of objects (including nano-satellites) that allow us to go further in exploration and in semi-permanent settlements. In the near future, sending and following a satellite from a mobile app will be as common as flying a drone is today. For Dunn and Kemmer, the P2P aerospace revolution will bring hundreds of thousands of citizens into the exploration of space and will go far beyond what any State has been able to do so far.

It might give us vertigo or seem incredible, but P2P production could finally open the doors of the lunar colonies of Philip K. Dick or Heinlein. The first human settlers will be makers who will accept the challenge and the joy of creating their own tools.

Translated by Steve Herrick from the original (in Spanish)

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The headline and opening paragraphs of this article stirred up a bittersweet nostalgia at first, pushing the same buttons as an 80s-era Spielberg movie: some kids take control of space junk using castoffs from the family rec room in an abandoned fast-food graveyard. But these aren’t kids, their plan is just ambitious enough without being far-fetched, and the whole thing seems to boil down to “let’s just see what happens” on the part of everyone involved –  NASA included. An open-source project upcycling icons of the 20th Century with public access (although mediated by Google). A very down-to-earth space program.

For the first time in history, an independent crew is taking control of a NASA satellite and running a crowdfunded mission. They’re doing it all from a makeshift mission control center in an abandoned McDonald’s in Mountain View, CA, using old radio parts from eBay and a salvaged flat screen TV.

“If I could come up with another absurd detail, I would,” Keith Cowing, the project’s team lead, told Betabeat.

The ISEE-3 is a disco-era satellite that used to measure space weather like solar wind and radiation, but went out of commission decades ago. Now, a small team led by Mr. Cowing have taken control of the satellite with NASA’s silent blessing.

Mr. Cowing is a former NASA employee, and now runs a handful of space news sites, like NASA Watch and SpaceRef. Sitting out in the desert one night after a documentary shoot, Mr. Cowing asked Bob Farquhar, an old NASA researcher who worked with the ISEE-3 in its glory days, what it would take to bring the satellite out of retirement.

The satellite’s battery has been dead for over 20 years, but it had solar panels to power 98 percent of the satellite’s full capabilities. In its heyday, it ran missions around the Moon and Earth, and flew through the tail of a comet. But technology gets old, and everyone happily let the successful satellite go, knowing it would be back in Earth’s orbit someday — namely, 2014.

Since the satellite went offline, the team had retired, the documentation was lost and the equipment was outdated. They could still hear the satellite out there talking, but they’d need to build the equipment to talk back.

But the satellite had been built for longevity with very simple technology. To get it back would simply be like trying to make concrete with the original Roman recipe. In other words, they’d need a few outdated parts, but it could definitely be done.

“What’s so hard about that?” Mr. Cowing remembers asking.

Two weeks later, they began a crowdfunding campaign that would beat its $125,000 goal and go on to raise $160,000. Within another six weeks, a small team was in Puerto Rico, running around Arecibo Observatory running tests, hoisting a transmitter into place with a helicopter, ready to make contact.

Read the rest of the article at betabeat.com

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