Alok Jha
Science and Technology Editor, The Economist
Fast forward into the future when humans are regularly visiting and even living in space. There’s a whole new economy where things are made and assembled in space, from huge satellites and spacecraft in orbit to entire cities on the Moon and Mars.
Danette Allen
Deputy Lead, Autonomous Systems Capability Leadership Team, NASA
We are treading new ground here.
Alok Jha
Science and Technology Editor, The Economist
So what advances in technology could make building and manufacturing in space a reality? The answer could be robots guided by AI.
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Could AI build cities in space?
Los Angeles, USA
Ed Mehr
CEO and Co-Founder, Machina Labs
I think a lot of paradigms will change the moment we start manufacturing in space.
Alok Jha
Science and Technology Editor, The Economist
Ed Mayer is Co-Founder of a company with ambitious plans to build a factory of the future in space.
Ed Mehr
CEO and Co-Founder, Machina Labs
AI and robotics are going to be a big part of that.
Alok Jha
Science and Technology Editor, The Economist
The ability to do this kind of building in space is decades away. But Machina Labs is drawing inspiration from the manufacturing process that it’s currently using here on earth.
Ed Mehr
CEO and Co-Founder, Machina Labs
We call these robotic cells robo-craftsmen.
Alok Jha
Science and Technology Editor, The Economist
The company specialises in a new way of shaping sheet metal called robo-forming.
Ed Mehr
CEO and Co-Founder, Machina Labs
Think of two robotic arms and two sides of a flat sheet of metal working together like fingers of the potter to form a sheet of metal into very complex shapes. They can pick up different tools, apply differently to the material and replicate all kinds of different processes.
Alok Jha
Science and Technology Editor, The Economist
The hope is that one day a new generation of robots like these will be able to assemble and construct things in space.
Ed Mehr
CEO and Co-Founder, Machina Labs
Welcome to our check in facility. We call this facility Machina East. We are using this facility to manufacturer our next generation which is going to be portable. Not only can it be deployed anywhere on earth but the portable nature of it can be also put eventually on a rocket and deployed to space.
Alok Jha
Science and Technology Editor, The Economist
AI is crucial to robo-forming.
Ed Mehr
CEO and Co-Founder, Machina Labs
With artificial intelligence now we can enter the realm where a robot can be flexible, can decide what to do and what not to do. It can change the set of operations that it was planning to do based on the inputs it’s getting from the environment.
Alok Jha
Science and Technology Editor, The Economist
In the future AI guided robots could enable numerous kinds of manufacturing to take place in space. A number of private companies have grand ambitions. This company Relativity Space wants to 3D print entire rockets on the surface of Mars. While another, Orbital Composites is working on 3D printing solar power stations in orbit to test out space based solar power. It could take decades to launch some of these technologies however the world’s most well-known space agency is on board.
Danette Allen
Deputy Lead, Autonomous Systems Capability Leadership Team, NASA
In addition to Artemis, an international effort for persistent presence on the Moon which is really focussed on getting the crew on the lunar surface, there are supporting missions to supply the materials, the robots, everything that we need to be able to build that infrastructure; habitat, landing pads, roads, power stations. When you think about building a small city on the Moon. But the Moon will also serve as a pathfinder, a test bed, a place for us to learn as we transit to Mars and seek a permanent presence there as well.
Alok Jha
Science and Technology Editor, The Economist
Settling humans on mars is a regular story in science fiction and many real people today, billionaires and beyond have dreams to do it too. The sophisticated AI and robotics in development today could help to build infrastructure that would make those dreams a reality.
Danette Allen
Deputy Lead, Autonomous Systems Capability Leadership Team, NASA
We are treading new ground here. We have not asked this much of our robotic systems ever before in the past. I think one of the earliest applications will probably be in monitoring. So imagine you’ve got habitat, even when humans aren’t there, 24 hours a day these need to run so you can imagine systems that are monitoring, doing fault detection and maybe even prediction, who could imagine even think about how human’s work handing off objects from one to the other. All of this will be done robotically with the intelligence, AI, that we need for this agency.
Alok Jha
Science and Technology Editor, The Economist
AI guided robotics could be used to construct space hotels for tourists. Manufacture semi-conductors or drugs in micro gravity and even mine asteroids. As futuristic as all this sounds AI and robotics are already being used in space.
On behalf of the Delta rocket with Mars Pathfinder.
Alok Jha
Science and Technology Editor, The Economist
NASA’s troop of Mars rovers has been trundling over the red planet since 1997. AI was used to pilot the unmanned Deep Space One after it was launched in 1998 to investigate an asteroid and comet while free-floating robots called Astrobee, help astronauts aboard the International Space Station with their routine duties. However using AI and robotics to build in space presents plenty of challenges. The robots will need to withstand the harsh conditions of space and operate in different gravity to earth and it won’t be easy to call out a mechanic if something goes wrong.
Bristol & Bath Science Park, England
Alok Jha
Science and Technology Editor, The Economist
Mark Woods is a specialist in autonomous robotics and AI.
Mark Woods
Chief Strategy Officer, Centre for Modelling and Simulation
I think the biggest chance we have in terms of doing things in space is just how to get people up there if things go wrong. The second thing is a lot of the communication we have with robotics of planetary bodies is not in real time so for example they can take anything from three to twenty two and a half minutes to get a signal from Earth to Mars. It’s just impossible to do what we might call tele operation or joy stick control of things. That means that the robots that we have on Mars really have to have some element of agency and autonomy.
Alok Jha
Science and Technology Editor, The Economist
The technological and financial hurdles involved in creating such systems are huge but so too are the possible rewards.
The Eagle has landed.
Alok Jha
Science and Technology Editor, The Economist
The global space business could generate revenue of more than 1 trillion dollars by 2040. Enhancing the capability to manufacture in space and to build cities there could bring economic benefits to humans. Perhaps more significantly it could help develop humans’ understanding of their place in the universe.
Ed Mehr
CEO and Co-Founder, Machina Labs
Exploration is part of our nature. I don’t think we are going to sit idly on earth and just send robots. I hope that as humans we can also go there and experience those outer worlds to become a multi-planetary species.
Alok Jha
Science and Technology Editor, The Economist
Hello, I’m Alok Jha, Science and Technology Editor of The Economist. If you’d like to read more about AI’s impact on science then click on the link opposite and if you would like to watch more of our Now & Next series, click on the other link. Thanks for watching and please don’t forget to subscribe.