Recently it was revealed SpaceX has begun a new development program, called Project Starfall. Reportedly they are developing uncrewed capsules for space manufacturing, which can be launched by their new Super Heavy Lift (SHL) Starship. This should allow sufficient time for goods to be manufactured in space, after which the capsules would land autonomously on Earth.
SpaceX has a history of envisioning new space opportunities then going all out to achieve them, yet Starfall seems their boldest business venture yet. Starship should reduce payload cost by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude but any orbital manufacturing process needs to be highly automated and compact, which significantly adds to cost. Implicitly the goods produced must be high demand, to close the business case.
Manna from Heaven
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