*It's a 3-D metal-forge fabricator, and they want to put it in the International Space Station to build busted parts of the International Space Station, on the spot. Given that the ISS is slowly coming apart and heading for the depths of the Pacific in five years, fabbing a space station inside a space station might be an aw3some solution.
*Nifty high-tech touch: the thing works in a vacuum.
*Of course, there is the extreme difficulty of all those ISS patent agreements, which we detailed earlier. We wouldn't want to see 'em turning into space-pirates up there, or anything:
https://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2009/09/intellectual-property-on-the-international-space-station/
*I'm waiting for the day that the bankrupt International Space Station is taken over by spacefaring, nuclear-powered Brazilians, Indians and Chinese (the Russians, of course, are a given), and it moves straight from Gothic High-Tech to free-fall Favela Chic. They just melt down the old NASA parts, throw 'em into the freeware fab hopper, spew out recycled parts and latch 'em on with zip-ties.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/electron_beam.html
(...)
"That's because layers mean everything to the environmentally-friendly construction process called Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication, or EBF3, and its operation sounds like something straight out of science fiction. (((Yeah, you bet it does, wahoo, dump my boring NASA logo for voter-friendly Star Trek Federation gear, etc)))
"You start with a drawing of the part you want to build, you push a button, and out comes the part," said Karen Taminger, the technology lead for the Virginia-based research project that is part of NASA's Fundamental Aeronautics Program.
(...)
"While the EBF3 equipment tested on the ground is fairly large and heavy, a smaller version was created and successfully test flown on a NASA jet that is used to provide researchers with brief periods of weightlessness. The next step is to fly a demonstration of the hardware on the International Space Station, Taminger said.
"Future lunar base crews could use EBF3 to manufacture spare parts as needed, rather than rely on a supply of parts launched from Earth. Astronauts might be able to mine feed stock from the lunar soil, or even recycle used landing craft stages by melting them." (((Now we're talkin'. Outer-space vacuum fabs on the Moon, sucking up lunar ice and doing parametric architecture designed by Neri Oxman. Man, a feat like that would make up for a lot.)))
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(((Exciting space-geek bonus: spark-blasting video of an aluminum-ice rocket, as narrated by space geek who apparently used to wrap herself up in aluminum foil and pretend to be a spacewoman:)))
http://www.spacevidcast.com/2009/10/12/alice-propellant-09-10-12/
