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from the spooky-action-at-a-distance dept.
Sarah LeTrent reports at CNN that NASA just "emailed" the design of a socket wrench to astronauts so that they could print it out in the orbit. The ratcheting socket wrench was the first "uplink tool" printed in space, according to Grant Lowery, marketing and communications manager for Made In Space, which built the printer in partnership with NASA. The tool was designed on the ground, "emailed" to the space station and then manufactured where it took four hours to print out the finished product. The space agency hopes to one day use the technology to make parts for broken equipment in space and long-term missions would benefit greatly from onboard manufacturing capabilities. "I remember when the tip broke off a tool during a mission," recalls NASA astronaut TJ Creamer, who flew aboard the space station during Expedition 22/23 from December 2009 to June 2010. "I had to wait for the next shuttle to come up to bring me a new one. Now, rather than wait for a resupply ship to bring me a new tool, in the future, I could just print it."
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday December 22 2014, @09:54AM
But if you can easily print a replacement (maybe using the broken old one, melted down and fed back into the printer, as raw materials) then why would you care if the thing is only good a for a few uses?
It would save a ton of space: For people who tinker and fix things all the time then it makes sense to keep a big collection of high quality metal tools in your man-shed. For those of us who only pull the toolbox out of the loft a few times a year, printable, recyclable tools would be a blessing.