Northwest Aerospace News February | March 2019 Issue No. 7 | Page 14

H
oyt shared that the Refabricator and a future
robotic arm payload called “MANTIS” will be
controlled from earth, over the Internet on a secure
network.
Hoyt said the first Refabricator payload is an
experiment to test the next generation of materials
that can be recycled and manufactured in space. All
items are plastic and will be melted down and print-
ed again instead of being thrown away or sterilized.
He added that medical and food grade items are the
largest consumable and waste on the ISS.
“They can be melted down, cleaned and used
again,” said Hoyt, so the next generation of Refab-
ricator, code-named “ERASMUS” after the patron
saint of sailors and stomach ailments, will be de-
signed to produce, recycle, and sterilize such items.
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NORTHWEST AEROSPACE NEWS
The difficulty of launching things into orbit
Hoyt said that when it comes to getting products onto the space
station or into orbit, there is a tremendous amount of time spent on
how to do it.
Why is it better to build in space than launch?
Hoyt said, “What it boils down to is if we can build capabilities
in space for manufacturing and assembly, we can improve per-
formance and reduce costs. Right now, satellites are built on the
ground. They must be folded to fit into a rocket and survive the
challenging vibration of going into orbit. 60 percent of cost goes
into surviving the first ten minutes of launch. We can reduce the
mass and rescue launch costs and then we can build bigger satellites
with higher performance.”
He added that, “Building tooling instead of completed pieces so that
new parts can be made anytime,” in space, is a much better idea.