World's first space factory, now in orbit, is also a hypersonic test bed

California startup Varda has celebrated the deployment of its first satellite, a test run of a fascinating space-based pharmaceuticals factory that moonlights as a hypersonic test rig during its Mach 25 re-entry to keep costs down.

Why manufacture in space? Well, when you're operating in zero gravity – or at least, in the microgravity environment of orbit – you're altering a very significant physical variable that's pretty much a constant for any Earth-based lab.

With gravity out of the equation, things like convection currents don't exist, because there's no "up" for heat to rise towards. And particles in liquid don't form clumps and rise to the surface or sink to the bottom like they do on Earth.

"The resulting tunable particle size distributions, more ordered crystals, and new forms," reads a Varda pamphlet, "can lead to improved bioavailability, extended shelf-life, new intellectual property, and new routes of administration."

Space Manufacturing for Life on Earth | Varda Space Industries

These and other factors have proven extremely helpful for one particular area of R&D: protein crystal growth, which represents "by far the largest single category of experiments" undertaken on the ISS, according to NASA.

This is a particularly attractive proposition for drug developers, who can use zero-gravity environments to crystallize biological proteins in order to analyze their structure and design medications to perfectly bind to them.

But they can also use a microgravity lab to manufacture their drugs in crystalline forms with extraordinary precision. We're not talking about whole tablets here, complete with binding agents and other cheap additives. But the active ingredients for these drugs can command an absolutely insane amount of money per kilogram.

Varda

Not Boring, working alongside Varda, has dug up some examples, the most outlandish of which is leukaemia immunotherapy drug Blincyto, at a cool US$114.3 billion per kilogram. Or the mRNA at the heart of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine; two gallons of that would make every dose that Pfizer has made to date – and those doses have generated more than $75 billion for Pfizer, or, as Not Boring puts it, a stack of hundred dollar bills that'd reach up 82% of the way to space.

So a space-based lab represents a unique production environment for both R&D and the manufacture of incredibly high-value substances – one that can be kept surgically clean and that can do things on the micro scale that simply can't be achieved on the ground.

And on the other side of the coin, costs per kilogram for space launches are famously crashing right now thanks to private space companies like SpaceX with their reusable rockets. Once Starship is up and running, those costs will plummet even further.

Doing things in space is thus rapidly becoming so cheap and accessible that it no longer has to be thought of as a "sometimes treat" for companies producing things like drugs, superconductors or superalloys.

Varda is simply the first company to get a space-based manufacturing satellite into orbit. There will be plenty of others coming.

Varda's first "space factory" launched yesterday aboard a Falcon 9, and it's now in orbit. Over the next week, it'll run systems tests, and then, assuming all goes to plan, it'll start commercially relevant tests on an old HIV/AIDS drug called Ritonavir, heating it up and cooling it down to examine the differences in its crystalline structure when the crystals are grown in space.

The factory, about the size of a yoga ball, will orbit around for a little over a month at an altitude over 1,000 km (621 miles), after which it'll fire off a retro-booster angled to slow it down enough that it'll fall back down to Earth.

As it drops through the vacuum of space toward its eventual landing spot at a US Air Force range in Utah, it'll accelerate to hypersonic speeds over Mach 25 (19,200 mph/31,000 km/h). The atmosphere will slow it down and heat it up as the air begins to get thicker, but it'll stay in the hypersonic range above Mach 5 (3,800 mph/6,200 km/h) until it's about 40 km (25 miles) from the surface.

And here's where Varda has applied some clever commercial thinking; since the thing's going to be doing hypersonic speeds anyway, Varda has packed up a "re-entry as a service" proposition that'll allow various US government hypersonic R&D programs to perform critical testing in a considerably more mission-relevant environment than the world's most advanced Mach 15 air tunnel facilities.

It's a terrific little two-birds-one-stone proposition, and a huge help in terms of generating revenue. In the long run, this kind of dual-purpose operation will make things cheaper for all parties involved.

By the time the spacecraft falls to the cruising altitude of a commercial airliner, it will have slowed to around 168 mph (270 km/h), at which point it can start deploying parachutes to bring it down for a gentle landing. The harsh conditions of re-entry won't affect the crystalline drugs on board, so it'll effectively be like a little delivery box from heaven.

If all goes to plan, Varda has a second mission scheduled for later this year – and this one will get the party started with actual commercial and government clients, in a manufacturing and testing arrangement the company believes will be commonplace within a couple of years. It'll also mark an incredibly quick journey from startup to first revenue in a space-based company; Varda was founded less than two and a half years ago.

Varda

The company has plans for reusable space factory modules, and it's also already considering the idea of running a manufacturing station that stays permanently in orbit, ferrying materials, equipment and maintenance gear up to dock with it as necessary. These measures are off in the medium-term future, but the age of the space factory has now officially begun.

Source: Varda via Not Boring

How The Flipper Zero Hacker Multitool Gets Made And Tested

Flipper Zero is an open-source multitool for hackers, and [Pavel] recently shared details on what goes into the production and testing of these devices. Each unit contains four separate PCBs, and in high-volume production it is inevitable that some boards are faulty in some way. Not all faults are identical — some are not even obvious —  but they all must be dealt with before they end up in a finished product.

Designing a process to effectively detect and deal with faults is a serious undertaking, one the Flipper Zero team addressed by designing a separate test station for each of the separate PCBs, allowing detection of defects as early as possible. Each board gets fitted into a custom test jig, then is subjected to an automated barrage of tests to ensure everything is as expected before being given the green light. A final test station gives a check to completed assemblies, and every test is logged into a database.

It may seem tempting to skip testing the individual boards and instead just do a single comprehensive test on finished units, but when dealing with production errors, it’s important to detect issues as early in the workflow as possible. The later a problem is detected, the more difficult and expensive it is to address. The worst possible outcome is to put a defective unit into a customer’s hands, where a issue is found only after all of the time and cost of assembly and shipping has already been spent. Another reason to detect issues early is that some faults become more difficult to address the later they are discovered. For example, a dim LED or poor antenna performance is much harder to troubleshoot when detected in a completely assembled unit, because the fault could be anywhere.

[Pavel] provides plenty of pictures and details about the production of Flipper Zero, and it’s nice to see how the project is progressing since its hyper-successful crowdfunding campaign.

C919's First Commercial Flight Heralds A New Era In Global Aviation Market

It is expected that with its single-aisle C919 aircraft, China will now offer a reliable low-cost alternative to existing international players, U.S. Boeing and European multinational Airbus along with the Russian Irkut MC-21.

China has made entry into the $2 trillion global aviation market with the first commercial flight of “Made in China” passenger jetliner C919 on May 28, 2023. According to media reports, the C919 single-aisle aircraft which made a 79-minute successful test debut on May 5, 2017, took to the skies from Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport with five crew members and 128 passengers on board at 10:32 a.m. (Beijing Time) and landed at Beijing Capital International Airport at 12:31 p.m smoothly which attracted worldwide attention. 

Aviation analysts say that the C919’s inaugural commercial flight represents China's major step towards thwarting the global duopoly of Boeing 737 made in the United States and Airbus A320 made in Europe. After the completion of several rounds of test flights, operated by China Eastern Airlines, the commercial Flight, codenamed MU9191 has made China to join the ranks of the few nations that have developed homegrown large airliners: The United States, Russia, Brazil, Canada, the U.K., France and Germany.

Surely, the C919's 119-minute successful flight is a glorious feather in the cap of China's ambitious aviation industry. For a country that only four decades ago was considered backward, the C919 has symbolized the industrial might of an emerging superpower and its dream to dominate a new technological era. 

It is expected that with its single-aisle C919 aircraft, China will now offer a reliable low-cost alternative to existing international players, U.S. Boeing and European multinational Airbus along with the Russian Irkut MC-21. Looking at China's technological progress on various fronts in the past four decades, it can be said with certainty that the C919 has the ability to break the monopolies of Boeing and Airbus, which have a duopoly in the global civil aviation business.

China is the world's second-largest and one of the world's fastest-growing civil aviation markets. Its aviation industry is a national priority, and the Chinese government is expending significant resources to develop domestic manufacturing capabilities, build new airports, train new pilots, and increase domestic maintenance capacity. China's top three airlines, i.e., Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines, are already among the world's top 10 carriers in terms of passenger volume.

According to the International Air Transport Association's forecast, China will become the world's largest civil aviation market by 2024-25. The passenger volume in the Chinese market is expected to reach 1.6 billion by 2037. On April 24, 2023, Airports Council International (ACI) estimated that China would contribute about 21% of global passenger traffic growth in the next two decades and overtake the U.S. as the largest aviation market in the world before 2035. China will need 5,110 single aisle planes - like the C919 - through 2035.

Not surprisingly, Boeing and Airbus have identified China as the single most important aviation market for sales over the next 10 to 15 years, and both companies are working hard to win orders from Chinese airlines. So it can be said that the C919 is China's answer to the Boeing 737 and Airbus 320 and it will reduce China's dependence on aviation giants Boeing and Airbus. More importantly, C919's commercial operation signals China's entry into the global aviation market as a strong competitor, shaking the dominance of Boeing and Airbus in the near future. 

It is pertinent to mention that the State Council of China approved China's long-distance commercial aircraft project in February 2007. The Shanghai-based manufacturer, Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) designed the twin-engine, single-aisle aircraft which is used for medium-haul commercial flights. The COMAC only took 10 years from the initiation of the project to test flight in 2017. It spent $6.5 billion developing the plane as a part of China's aviation dreams. On September 29, 2022, it obtained the Type Certificate from the Civil Aviation Administration of China. The narrow-bodied passenger aircraft was sent to China Eastern Airlines in December 2022 for testing.

China's first-ever domestically designed and built civilian airliner C919 is in the same category as the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737. The "C" in the aircraft's name stands for both China and COMAC, while 9 symbolizes "forever" in Chinese culture and 19 represents the fact that the plane can host 190 passengers at maximum capacity. The development of C919 aircraft reflects China's manufacturing strength and signals a shift in the influence of the big powers on the international stage. No doubt, with the first commercial flight of C919, China once again has amazed the world with its "China speed". 

For decades, China has been gearing up to realize its dream of "taking off" by boosting a global aviation power with nationwide strength. The jumbo passenger jet's development has been endorsed by Chinese President Xi Jinping to transform China into a creator of profitable technology. Xi visited COMAC in 2013 and his words: “Accelerate the construction of the world's top aviation company and continue to make new contributions to develop a strong aviation industry,” remain emblazoned on the walls of its production facility. Notably, President Xi met the representatives of the C919 project team in September last year and urged more breakthroughs in high-end equipment manufacturing. It is obvious that the C919 flight is China's bold step toward independence from Boeing and Airbus.

However, some Western media outlets including The Wall Street Journal and CNN claim China “assembled” rather than “manufactured” the C919, as it has used many foreign technologies. It's true that the C919's LEAP-1C engine was designed by the U.S.-French joint venture CFM International but that does not change the fact that the C919 was domestically made by COMAC. More than 200 Chinese subcontractors have served various parts for the C919 aircraft. More importantly, COMAC’s assembling of a modern passenger aircraft marks a major Chinese accomplishment. That's why China has independent intellectual property rights over the C919.

In a reply to Western criticism that China’s answer to Boeing and Airbus isn’t as ‘homegrown’ China’s state media, The Global Times commented on May 29, 2023 that “The maiden commercial flight by China’s first domestically-manufactured large passenger aircraft… ushers in a new era for the cooperation between Chinese manufacturers and foreign companies.” The origin of certain China's C919 passenger plane’s components does not mean that it is any less of an achievement. China is no longer merely assembling goods but making its own world-leading products.

The Chinese government wants the C919 to have 10% of China’s domestic commercial aircraft market by 2025. Five years from now, COMAC wants to be producing 150 C919 aircraft per year. As of January 2023, COMAC had received 1,200 orders for cost-friendly C919 jet aircraft including 34 orders from foreign companies. To blunt the Western criticism as well as U.S. sanctions on export restrictions on its U.S. suppliers on the horizon, China should focus on creating domestically-made engines and avionics if the country wants to become a major global aviation power. 

In his book about China's aviation revolution, “The Dragon Takes Flight” (2015), Derek Levine described the C919 as part of an intense government attempt to show its citizens that their country possessed and could produce the world's most advanced technology. Now the successful commercial flight of the C919 has helped China reclaim its status as a great power by developing indigenous innovation. The C919 makes a Chinese 'dream come true', showing the world its manufacturing prowess, development of advanced technology and national ambition to regain past glory. The commercial debut of C919 flight once again convinces the world that China can now draw an incredibly gorgeous picture for the future of China's aviation industry.