Comment by HPsquared
4 days ago
In a way that's good because they don't need logistics for the entire supply and production chain up there, they can just drop the (small and presumably valuable) silicon crystals back to Earth.
4 days ago
In a way that's good because they don't need logistics for the entire supply and production chain up there, they can just drop the (small and presumably valuable) silicon crystals back to Earth.
Silicon ingots used in chip manufacturing aren’t that small: like a ~400mm diameter cylinder a metre or so long, and from memory several hundred kilos.
Looking up their website, it sounds like the company are making only the seed crystal in space, not the entire silicon boule:
"Space Forge is using space-derived crystal seeds to grow ultra-high quality semiconductor substrates on Earth."
https://www.spaceforge.com/