Elon Musk's SpaceX to launch reusable "fabships" for orbital chip manufacturing experiments — 'the ultimate egg drop challenge,' Besxar's orbital chipmaking experiments to occur over 12 launches
The startup is betting on the vacuum of space to solve chipmaking's purity problem, with SpaceX boosters as its test lab.
It's not quite a chip factory in orbit yet, but that's the end goal of yet another project to build processors in space. Washington D.C.–based startup Besxar just announced that it has inked a 12-launch deal with SpaceX to test an idea I would have discarded as science-fiction nonsense before: manufacturing semiconductors in the hard vacuum of space.
The company's prototype manufacturing pods, called "Fabships," will hitch rides on the boosters of Falcon 9 rockets starting late this year. Each booster will carry two microwave-sized units that remain attached during flight, spend a few minutes exposed to near-space vacuum, and then return to Earth with the booster less than ten minutes later. It's the first reusable payload program that SpaceX has signed, and it marks the opening salvo in Besxar's plan to build what it calls the world's first orbital semiconductor foundry.
CEO Ashley Pilipiszyn describes the approach as a pragmatic response to the limits of terrestrial chipmaking. "AI data centers are straining against power and cooling limits, and fabs can't reach the vacuum or yields that next-generation materials demand," she said in the company's announcement.
The logic goes like this: Earth's best clean rooms are still dirtier than the ultra-high vacuum (UHV) of space, which results in poorer yields than chipmakers would prefer. Rather than spending billions recreating an approximation of those conditions inside a fab, Besxar wants to use space itself as the clean room.
It's a bold thesis, but it's a hell of a long way from commercial reality. The first dozen "Clipper-class" Fabships are essentially engineering experiments, designed to test whether delicate wafers can survive launch, exposure, and reentry without cracking or warping. Pilipiszyn herself calls it "the ultimate egg drop challenge," referencing the popular primary school science competition where students attempt to protect a fragile egg from cracking in a drop from the school's roof or a similar height.
The company purportedly has more missions under contract than employees, backed by a mix of strategic angel investors, institutional funds, and early support from NVIDIA's Inception program. Besxar is also apparently working under a Department of Defense contract, which hints at longer-term ambitions in defense-grade materials and radiation-hardened components.
If all goes well, the campaign will run through next year, producing data to inform larger, longer-duration orbital manufacturing systems. Even then, don't expect the first "Made in Space" chips before 2030 or beyond. This is a feasibility study; it's the aerospace equivalent of tinkering in a garage, except the garage keeps landing on a drone ship.
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Still, if Besxar's bet pays off, the company could rewrite the economics of chip purity and supply chain resilience, which is no doubt exactly why it has attracted so much early funding. Even if its ploy doesn't pan out, it's still a fascinating footnote — a real, expensive experiment in expanding where and how we build the world's most important technology.
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Zak is a freelance contributor to Tom's Hardware with decades of PC benchmarking experience who has also written for HotHardware and The Tech Report. A modern-day Renaissance man, he may not be an expert on anything, but he knows just a little about nearly everything.
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bit_user LOL, if you think chips are expensive now, just wait until they start having to be made in orbit!Reply
BTW, can gamma rays cause physical damage to chip structures, at modern scales? IIRC, they can damage DNA, which means molecular-scale damage can definitely occur. That might be a downside they face. -
coolitic Reply
It's trivial to shield interiors from gamma-rays...bit_user said:LOL, if you think chips are expensive now, just wait until they start having to be made in orbit!
BTW, can gamma rays cause physical damage to chip structures, at modern scales? IIRC, they can damage DNA, which means molecular-scale damage can definitely occur. That might be a downside they face.
How do you think humans survive at all? -
bit_user Reply
Yeah, maybe if you build the fab inside of a small asteroid!coolitic said:It's trivial to shield interiors from gamma-rays...
Seriously, people are talking about building moon bases underground, in order to provide adequate shielding from cosmic radiation.coolitic said:How do you think humans survive at all?
https://www.astronomy.com/space-exploration/lunar-lava-tube-could-shelter-a-future-moon-base/ -
thestryker I'm just trying, and failing, to think of what sort of manufacturing this could ever be viable for. I have no doubt that it would improve yields, but the sheer volume of manufacturing blows up logistics. This is without considering any logistics for setting up a fab in space.Reply -
USAFRet Reply
It will happen.thestryker said:I'm just trying, and failing, to think of what sort of manufacturing this could ever be viable for. I have no doubt that it would improve yields, but the sheer volume of manufacturing blows up logistics. This is without considering any logistics for setting up a fab in space.
Eventually. Decades and decades from now.
Long after you, me, and Elmo are dead. -
bit_user Reply
If space-based industries continue growing, and especially if we're able to start tapping resources from asteroids, then it would certainly make sense to do manufacturing of lots of stuff in orbit. Even before then, I wonder if we'll see orbital recycling of defunct satellites and spent rocket stages.USAFRet said:It will happen.
Eventually. Decades and decades from now.
Long after you, me, and Elmo are dead.
Some things would seem logistically simpler to do on the moon. Let's just hope it doesn't turn out like that 2009 movie with Sam Rockwell!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/ -
Notton Manufacturing in space won't be viable unless we figure out how to reduce pollution from the launches.Reply
Unlike commercial airplanes that pollute the lower atmosphere, rockets also release pollution into the upper atmosphere.
Both are problems, but the higher up you go, the worse the effects are thought to be. -
bit_user Reply
Manufacturing in space, for space, would reduce dependence on launches.Notton said:Manufacturing in space won't be viable unless we figure out how to reduce pollution from the launches.
Agreed about manufacturing in orbit, for consumption on earth. For that, perhaps a space elevator? I read somewhere that graphene is thought to have enough tensile strength not to tear under its own weight. -
Moxylite But how will they test for any chip defects in space? May have alot of of bad batches coming back on descent.Reply
"Chip-level soft errors occur when particles hit the chip, e.g., when secondary particles from cosmic rays land on the silicon die. If a particle with certain properties hits a chip it can cause cells to change state to a different value. Indeed, in modern devices, cosmic rays may be the predominant cause of many unexplained errors. Although the primary particle of the cosmic ray does not generally reach the Earth's surface, it creates a shower of energetic secondary particles surrounding Earth."