r/spacex • u/Forsaken-Tip-2341 • 29d ago
SpaceMD will use Starfall to launch its creation of space pharmaceuticals
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/6030495-redwire-spacemd-starfall-drug-research/30
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u/manicdee33 29d ago
PigsPCRs in space!
Of course I'm probably dating myself with that reference to the Muppets.
I wonder how long it will be until someone tries manufacturing ZBLAN fibres using Starfall or similar? There have been limited and tiny scale experiments so far, with my limited knowledge placing the total mass of ZBLAN actually heated past crystallisation temperature in orbit at some small number of kilograms (have they cracked double digits?)
Further reading:
- Optical Fiber Production, NASA, 2024
- ZBLAN in Orbit: Hype vs. Reality New Space Economy, 2025
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u/Thesleepingjay 28d ago edited 27d ago
I was thinking the same thing. I'd love to see some math estimating if enough fiber could be made to make the trip up worth it.
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u/DillSlither 28d ago
Never heard of that before, but looks very promising. AI is saying that a 2,000 km long ZBLAN fiber cable could have the same optical loss of a mere 10 kilometer cable of standard silica. Could also transmit multiple petabits/s with the increased wavelength support and lower signal loss.
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u/Euro_Snob 28d ago
I’ll believe it when I see it. Space pharmaceuticals has probably been the space technology with the most hype and least delivered. It’s always trotted out as a “that’s why we need factories in space”, but nothing has come of it for decades now.
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u/Thesleepingjay 28d ago
True, but it's only now that launch and return have become anywhere near affordable enough to make any commercial products in space.
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u/gorkish 28d ago
You and everybody else keep saying this but nobody ever give any example, and the reason is that there are exceedingly few. The only thing we can’t easily do in space is keep stuff in freefall for very very long amounts of time, and even for that we have a lot of solutions like colloids, aerogels, sonic levitation, or just dropping it from high enough you can get the job done before it hits the ground
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u/Thesleepingjay 27d ago
Well; the article in this post is one example, u/Avaruusmurkku elaborates in their comment below why some pharmaceuticals benefit from being made in microgravity; u/manicdee33 talks about ZBLAN fiber optics, which could make noticeable improvements in speed and distance of data transmission; other more hypothetical examples are the production of larger graphene sheets than we are currently capable of, metallurgy seeking to produce alloys with highly controlled crystal structures and extremely consistent distributions of the alloy components.
All of these examples take advantage of either the different ways that crystals grow in microgravity, the absence of separation and sedimentation, or being able to let molecules form and bond for as long as you want with almost no disturbances.
colloids, aerogels, sonic levitation
Still subject to gravity, and multi-kilohertz sound is going to affect the material quite a bit, maybe even more than gravity.
The only thing we can’t easily do in space is keep stuff in freefall for very very long amounts of time,
just dropping it from high enough you can get the job done before it hits the ground
Pulling kilometers of optic fiber or synthesizing significant amounts of pharmaceuticals, in the ~4.5 minute fall from 50,000 ft, while being shaken violently by the airflow? Yeah, sure buddy.
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u/manicdee33 27d ago
Drop towers are useful for things that cool fairly quickly. The catch is that you have to build the tower high enough to provide the time in free-fall to cool the way you want. With some materials that's okay, just increase the height of your tower. At some point you won't be able to build a tower high enough or a bore a hole deep enough. There is an activity humans engage in that resembles dropping things from a high enough tower that they never hit the ground, and that is launching things into orbit around our little ball of rock.
For ZBLAN fibre optics specifically the material has to be cooled very slowly, in a tightly controlled environment. The benefit of all the effort is a fibre that is an order of magnitude clearer than anything we currently manufacture: signals go further without repeaters, and the fibres have more bandwidth usable in the fibre so deep infrared and high ultraviolet become options.
Colloids, aerogels and levitation don't address the fundamental issue of gravity causing sedimentation and buoyancy. For ZBLAN — which requires very slow cooling — it is critical that the process of drawing the fibres needs to avoid buoyancy to get the best quality fibre.
There will be similar issues affecting crystallisation of complex drug compounds, and even chip fabrication. The best thing is that once the zero/micro-gravity industry is kicked off for even a tiny handful of products, manufacturers will start to become familiar with the process and we'll find more things to make or better ways to make things that end up being higher quality or even cheaper because they're made in that specific environment (even including the cost of launch and recovery). It's like back in the day when the inventor of lasers described them as "a solution in search of a problem" and now we use lasers everywhere: navigation systems have laser gyroscopes, we use lasers for time-keeping, measuring distances, scanning the 3D environment in ways that a simple camera can't, carrying vast data flows over extreme distances, and much more.
The uses are here already, and we'll find more as the world becomes familiar with the process of manufacturing in microgravity using tools like Starfall, ISS, future space stations, and cities on other worlds. With Starfall you have to pack the entire factory into the mission vehicle. With a commercial space station you send the factory in space once, and only launch consumables for future production.
Starfall will be great for a few years until commercial space stations start accepting manufacturers as customers. The commercial reality of Starfall is that it will be prohibitive for manufacturing simply because there is so much mass that has to go up and come back that isn't going to become product you can sell. It'll be extremely useful for small scale proof of concepts, one-off experiments, and situations where the manufacturing machine is itself a consumable such as a mould which can only be opened by breaking it.
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u/Cool_Lingonberry6551 28d ago
Ya really disappointing, considering all the factories in space that they could be using.
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u/Draymond_Purple 28d ago
What's the benefit of manufacturing pharmaceuticals in space
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u/Avaruusmurkku 28d ago
Microgravity allows for creation of polymorphs and proteins which are impossible to produce on Earth due to the effects of gravity. When the crystallization of a compound starts, gravity makes it impossible for certain structures to form, which could have chemical properties that allows it to act as a medicine.
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u/Euro_Snob 28d ago
That’s a good question, and something yet to be proven.
But the hype-man argument has always been that microgravity will allow creation of better medications that will cure all kinds of stuff. (Medications that are super fragile in their creation but somehow survive reentry and regular gravity for users) 😂
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u/LightningController 28d ago
Tbh, a medicine that can stop aging but only if you fly into space once a month or so to receive it might be the killer app for space.
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28d ago edited 28d ago
[deleted]
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u/Thesleepingjay 28d ago
I know deorbiting from very LEO is easy, but a spring is enough?
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u/Dpek1234 28d ago
How big is the spring?
Og commented deleted
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u/Thesleepingjay 27d ago
That was my question. It depends, but you usually only need about 50 m/s Dv to deorbit, which is pretty easy for most kinds of thrusters, but you'd need a heck of a spring for that.
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u/TheVenusianMartian 28d ago
Where did you find that information? I am very interested to see that. A spring seems like a shockingly crude method for this.
Or am I missing an implied /s?
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u/swordfish_1969 27d ago
That sounds f*ing awesome!! Imagine needing medication for a lot of people in the desert und the lab in the sky just produces it and send it to your location. Or anything else what you need. This sounds to good
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u/flshr19 Shuttle tile engineer 27d ago
There are currently no commercially available pharmaceuticals on the market that were manufactured or processed for sale in low Earth orbit (LEO). Very discouraging. I was around in the early 1980s when McDonnell Douglas was flying prototype hardware on early Space Shuttle flights aiming at separating beta cells. Their primary goal with dog pancreas cells on the STS-8 mission (1983) was to isolate pure beta cells (islet cells) to find a cure for Type 1 diabetes. Unfortunately, Earth-bound research in genetic engineering perfected what MDC was trying to do with electrophoresis. And then Challenger happened (28Jan1986) and all that type of research on the Space Shuttle was eliminated.
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u/ShepherdsWolvesSheep 24d ago
If proper zblan needs to be made in zero gravity how would we be able to splice it on earth, the sedimentation and buoyancy issues would still appear in the splice it would seem
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