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In-space manufacturing startup aces pharma experiment in orbit (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/spacex

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Maybe only tangentially related to SpaceX, but an amazing sign of the space revolution yet to come — thanks in large part to SpaceX for lowering the cost to get to orbit.

About the re-entry vehicle: "...we’re building like 1986 Toyota Corolla that is meant to be less than a million bucks a pop, quickly refurbished, and then shot right back into space.” How cool!

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[–] cxtinac 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That's great, but one part I don't understand is the compelling advantage of growing drug crystals (from the article) in micro-g. I get that maybe they are larger & maybe fewer defects (?) but why is that important for this application?

[–] snota 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My laymen's thought is that Chrystal growth requires nucleation points in the solution to start it off. In uG I guess the impurities required for the nucleation would be more evenly distributed and it means that as the crystals grow they would be more uniform. Having said that, I expect they just crush it all up in to a powder anyway so maybe that's not the case.

[–] cxtinac 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks, fair enough.

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