It's the day after Donald Trump declares his election victory, and a NATO tech scout peers at a miniature shoebox-sized factory designed to produce semiconductors in space.
Chris O'Connor, with his black bomber jacket and military haircut, has spent the past year searching Europe for companies that will give NATO a technological edge over Russia and China – a job that has become even more urgent in the past 36 hours as NATO technological advantage over Russia and China. region rushes to prepare for Trump 2.0. Here, on a gray industrial estate on the outskirts of Cardiff in Wales, he thinks he has found one.
Space Forge wants to send satellites equipped with small clean chambers into space, where they will grow semiconductor crystals before transporting them safely back to Earth.
One Space Forge satellite could eventually produce enough semiconductor material to power tens of thousands of phones, chief technology officer Andrew Bacon estimates, speaking in an office crowded with newly hired staff. Bacon says he's more interested in making electric car chargers to fight climate change, and in Space Forge's potential to drive all polluting industries off the planet.
But O'Connor is here because Space Forge has attracted the interest of the billion-euro NATO Innovation Fund (NIF). Manufacturing semiconductors in space, where there is no dirt, air or gravity, has the potential to provide efficiencies that could create superior versions of military instruments like radar.
“The distance that radar can travel – which translates into what it can see and how quickly it can do so – can be dramatically improved by using these materials,” says O'Connor, explaining why Space Forge is one of the the NIF's first six investments. made public.
In addition to Space Forge, year-old NIF's investments also include battlefield robots, a company that produces a lighter version of the carbon fiber used to build cars and rockets, and several aerospace startups.
This is the alliance's first foray into the risky and profitable world of venture capital, using its members' money to fund the experiment. Space Forge has never made semiconductor material in space. The one time the company attempted to launch its satellites, the Virgin Orbit rocket failed, giving them a ride 110 miles (177 kilometers) above Earth before crashing into the ocean. O'Connor, one of three partners at the fund, is optimistic that there is no guarantee the investments will work out. “We have been given a mandate to take this risk,” he says.
