Institute For The Future

From #20Forecasts: The New Space Race Yields Innovation on Earth

With efforts under way to commercialize spaceflight, governmental organizations will become customers of entrepreneurial ventures around medicine, manufacturing, and surveillance funded by private industry. Even as NASA has been subjected to relentless budget cuts, and the Space Shuttle program has come to its long-delayed end, new means for engaging with the “final frontier” are emerging.

This decade’s space race will be between companies like SpaceX jockeying for NASA contracts, third parties such as biotech firms seeking to do microgravity medical research, and private outfits like Virgin Galactic banking on a boon in space tourism and small satellite launches. So while the first space race drove breakthroughs in science and technology that eventually trickled down to civilians—from the artificial heart based on a space shuttle fuel pump to biodegradable commercial lubricants—private space programs will likely accelerate R&D and commercialization of new technologies developed for, or in, space. Here are several examples of offworld technologies with valuable applications on terra firma:

Life science goes to space

Researchers from the the BioServeSpace Technologies center at the University of Colorado have designed more than 40 microgravity life sciences experiments for low earth orbit spacecraft and the International Space Station. In work funded in part by SpaceX, they've studied how nanoparticles move through a microscale plumbing system where the pipes are measured in millionths of a meter. The results could inform the development of new implantable drug delivery systems that can administer precise amounts of medicine within the human body. Recently, the BioServe team tested the effectiveness of antibiotic drugs in space with the aim of understanding antibiotic resistance to develop new drugs and tests of those drugs for use on Earth.

Orbital manufacturing becomes practical

More than a dozen industrial firms in Europe have partnered to design a 3D printer that can crank out high-quality metal parts in zero gravity. A collaboration with the European Space Agency, the AMAZE project (Additive Manufacturing Aiming Towards Zero Waste & Efficient Production of High-Tech Metal Products) is focused on new alloys as feedstock for the printers and the use of lasers or plasma to melt the material during the printing process. According to the ESA, 3D printers that can crank out highly complex and high-quality metal components would improve Earth-based industries as well, resulting in cheaper and better aircraft components, automotive systems, and other products.

A window seat for your satellite

With satellites dramatically dropping in price, the demand increases for an affordable way to get the microsats into orbit. In January, commercial "spaceline" Virgin Galactic demonstrated the liquid rocket engines that are key to its LauncherOne system designed specifically for satellite delivery. LauncherOne rockets will be carried into the sky by Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo aircraft and released at approximately 50,000 feet where they fire off to deliver their satellite payloads into low-earth orbit.

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This post is the 3rd in a series exploring IFTF's new interactive map from our Technology Horizons program, 20 Combinatorial Forecasts—featured in FastCompany Co.EXIST's "When Technologies Combine, Amazing Innovation Happens." Every few weeks we'll take a deep dive into another of the map's twenty forecasts on the future of technology at the intersections of different fields.

All posts in the series »

Curious about the Technology Horizons program?

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