It's the day after Donald Trump announced his election victoryAnd a technology scout for NATO is looking at a miniature factory the size of a shoebox, designed to make semiconductors in space.
Chris O'Connor, with his black bomber jacket and military haircut, has spent the last year in Europe looking for companies that can deliver nato technological edge over Russia and China – a task that has become even more urgent over the past 36 hours as the region prepares for Trump 2.0Here, in a gray industrial estate on the outskirts of Cardiff in Wales, they believe they have found the one.
Space Forge wants to send satellites equipped with tiny clean rooms into space, where they will grow semiconductor crystals and transport them safely back to Earth.
A Space Forge satellite could eventually make enough semiconductor material to power thousands of phones, Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bacon estimated, speaking in an office full of newly appointed employees. Bacon says he's more interested in Space Forge's ability to create chargers for electric cars to fight climate change and eliminate all polluting industries from the planet.
But O'Connor is here because Space Forge has piqued the interest of the €1 billion ($1 billion) NATO Innovation Fund (NIF). Creating semiconductors in space, where there is no dirt, air or gravity, has the potential to deliver efficiencies that could create better versions of military equipment like radar.
“The distance that radar can cover – what it can see and how quickly it can do it – can be dramatically improved using these materials,” O'Connor says, adding that Explaining why Space Forge was among NIF's first six investments. Was made public.
Along with Space Forge, the 1-year-old NIF's investments include a company making a lighter version of carbon fiber used to make battlefield robots, cars and rockets, and several space startups.
It is the alliance's first foray into the high-risk, high-reward world of venture capital, using its members' money to finance the experiment. Space Forge has never actually made semiconductor materials in space. When the company attempted to launch its satellites, the Virgin Orbit rocket failed before crashing into the ocean 177 kilometers above Earth. O'Connor, one of three partners in the fund, is optimistic about the fact that there is no guarantee that the investment will work. “We have been ordered to take this risk,” he says.