Astronomer royal calls for 'Plan B' to prevent runaway climate change

[muriel_volestrangler]

66. Then run your super-duper 3D printers on Earth

You need a reason to run your 3d printers in space rather than on earth, where their products will be used.

"3d printing can produce virtually any product"

Anyone who says this has no understanding whatsoever of materials science. There's so much more to production than making something the right shape.

"Unless it happens to a be a product that would be made by materials mined on earth, with energy generated on earth and it's
something that will be used on earth...thereby displacing all the subsequent associated pollution in that manufacturing stream. "

Yet again, you need to actually name a major industry causing environmental problems, not just assume there is one.

"Moving things on an assembly line require more energy to do because of a little thing called gravity."

No, not really. Assembly lines are largely flat. The difference in energy consumed between moving objects on rollers or wheels on Earth, and the same line in space, is negligble. But the absence of gravity makes it much harder to keep an object where you want it - the slightest movement and it can float off. Add to that the huge cost of keeping alive the people who run the factory, and there's not point, apart from a few very specialised, high cost, low volume applications - which won't help the environment significantly by moving them off the planet.

If garments are some day manufactured by something like a 3D printer, there's no advantage to it happening in space. The raw material is down here (organic material or hydrocarbons). Your article is not relevant to manufacturing in space.

Solar cell power generation can be done on Earth as well as in space - where we have oxygen for the people who build, install and maintain them. The idea that you can do all this in space when it takes billions a year just to keep alive a handful of people in the ISS is ridiculous.