Breakthrough brings factory in space closer to reality
www.bbc.com
A factory in space has been switched on and has reached temperatures of about 1,000C.
  • epicthundercat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    10 hours ago

    Ew… Aliens don’t need more human garbage. Have you seen how much space junk we have?.. We already look like the universe’s junk yard.

      • Cocodapuf@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        5 hours ago

        Kessler syndrome is no joke.

        Except it kind of is.

        It can’t really happen at very low earth orbit, where the majority of satellites are, as any unpowered space junk would deorbit relatively quickly. And it can’t really happen at geostationary orbit, where most of the rest of them are, because when you go out that far there’s just so much space between every single object… The only way you run into something out there is on purpose and after a lot of calculations.

        So there’s medium orbits and higher LEO those are the only areas we need to be really careful with.

  • Auth@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    16 hours ago

    Pretty interesting. How come they can get 1000c in space but not on earth? Doesnt the vacuum of space make it hard to retain heat?

    • Decq@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      4 hours ago

      The article doesn’t state they can’t reach that temperature down on earth, and many processes do. It’s really not the jist of the article. Space manufacturing is interesting for the micro-gravity and better vacuum/less contamination. .

    • Gsus4@mander.xyzOPEnglish
      8·
      8 hours ago

      Vacuum is a perfect thermal insulator. The only real losses are radiative.

      Edit: From Stefan-Boltzmann: up to (not sure about emissivities, but could be down to 10% of this) 100kW for a black body of 1m diameter at 1000C.

      • Auth@lemmy.worldEnglish
        31·
        16 hours ago

        I’m completely unaware of the science around it all but none the less its exciting stuff, i hope to read more about it as things progress.