/sci/ - Science & Math

How long until true orbital construction is a reality? Do you think orbital ship-making is necessary for any real human expansion into space to ever happen?

I was just reading about NASA's use of 3D-printer's in space for making their spare parts on the spot, and it got me (on a tangent) wondering about the logistics of something like an orbital shipyard...

Of course the biggest issue is getting the heavy stuff up there to be assembled. Right now we just use rockets, and that is the greatest limiting factor towards all our space endeavors thus far. I think ideas like "space elevators" are retarded, and I cant see a working/economical method where we get enough raw materials off the earth and into space to do any significant expansion (or am I wrong?)

If we could produce an infrastructure of satellites that could collect space debris and recycle that shit into spacecraft-building materials, we'd be halfway there. We could assemble the heavy stuff in low earth orbit (using robots & astronauts) and bring the most complicated components up individually, on rockets from Earth...