this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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My company worked on the ISS (what's now my team did the electrical power system software), and there really was more to it than that. The way you word it sounds like they took spent boosters and converted them into habitat modules, but that's not at all the way it was. Each element was designed to be brought up in the space shuttle bay and assembled in space (it's the reason for the shuttle's existence). We know how to assemble stuff in space, it's just expensive.
Assembling premade components is one thing, I think he was talking about actually making stuff. If we want effective shielding, thatβs a lot of mass, so it would be much easier if we could find it already up there
Maybe if you were going to try to mass produce up there, but the mass of the equipment needed to mine and smelt ore and roll it out into plating would be way more than the mass of the plating for a single vehicle. And that's not considering capturing an asteroid and bringing it into orbit.
Definitely oversimplification and I don't mean to understate the efforts, technology, engineering, and materials that went into the ISS. It's incredible. My main point being just how simple the current state-of-the-art is compared to what would be needed for a sustainable orbital shipyard.
Indeed (ISS being a good example of this fact). The scope here though is beyond just assembly. Also, at minimum, manufacturing of shielding components would likely be necessary in order for such an undertaking to be feasible.