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Comment by bobcostas55 | Hacker News Reader

Once space exploration really gets going, mobile chip fabrication is gonna be a pretty big deal.

NASA had a 1980 study° of space fabrication systems where they referred to small, light, hard-to-manufacture parts as "vitamins." These vitamins (ICs certainly, perhaps special sensors or high-quality optics) would likely be the last part of the manufacturing system to be moved from Earth into space due to the complexity (=mass/volume) of fabrication and relative ease of transportation.

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This terminology also got carried on top the self replicating 3d printer world. Any part that cant be produced by a printer is a vitamin.

Good point. The space race would have massive benefits for us on earth in nanofabrication. Just one more bonus point for space.

How does microgravity help in nanofabrication?

It may not be the microgravity that's the major help, but the hard vacuum. Deep space is the biggest, best clean room there could ever be.

Wouldn't you have to deal with radiation that you are normally shielded from in Earth`s atmosphere? That may be more difficult to shield from than producing a normal clean room.

I would bet that it's easier to design an orbital or moon-based structure (depending on whether production benefits from or suffers from microgravity) that's heavily shielded with lead, than it would be to create a deep-space-class hard vacuum in a volume of space on Earth suitable for large-scale industrial processes. It's a simple matter of not making the structure airtight.

Given the volume and mass payload capabilities of the upcoming Starship/Superheavy, cheaply lifting bulk quantities of lead into space may actually be a reasonable proposal in the next five years rather than ultra-expensive pie-in-the-sky fantasy as it was during the age of disposable rockets.

The thought of handling toxic, corrosive liquids in zero gravity is terrifying.

Not just corrosive, but calcium devouring.

Honestly. Name a hazard and it's present in at least a handful of chemicals used in ic fabrication.

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