It has been a dream of mankind for ages…to set foot on that elusive red dot in the sky. To see what is really there, to see more than robotically broadcast images, to reach down and grasp a handful of rustic soil and let it sift slowly through gloved fingers. But what will it take to get there? It is not a trivial issue to maintain a crew of humans for three solid years on artificial life support systems, nor is it easy to transport the required mass of structures needed to sustain life over the millions of miles to Mars. No comping up for air, no two-week re-supply from Mother Earth. Even the small robotic missions have had a hit-and-miss history regardless of the height of technology stacked into them. A critical part of long term manned space presence will be the capability to build and repair a large array of components on the go, from circuit boards, to brackets to complete living structures. How will we be able to do it?

This presentation will focus on one aspect of manufacturing in space. A recent NASA-sponsored conference on In Space Fabrication and Repair specifically asked these difficult questions to a group of experienced manufacturing professionals from NASA, industry and academia. A significant amount of discussion focused around a specific set of new manufacturing technologies, collectively deemed as “rapid prototyping” (RP) or “solid freeform fabrication” (SFF). These fabrication techniques are unique in that they build objects additively by selectively depositing material to “grow” a part from the bottom-up, as opposed to traditional subtractive or forming manufacturing techniques. While these technologies may or may not apply to large scale structure fabrication, there is a high likelihood that they can be used on parts built in the “shirtsleeve” environment of a spacecraft.