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Starfall – Affordable, routine access to microgravity

98 points gmays 2 hours ago 54 comments

drivebyhooting 1 hour ago | parent

It sounds like a super villain weapon.

If you manufacture there how do you recover it?

ceejayoz 1 hour ago | parent

> If you manufacture there how do you recover it?

The graphic shows it reentering the atmosphere.

Bluebird803 1 hour ago | parent

Presumably the same way we have always recovered payloads from space. Heat-shield + parachute. I'm assuming there would be some capability to do a retrograde maneuver so that the re-entey can be done when and where desired, rather than leaving it to the whims of pure drag.

itishappy 1 hour ago | parent

You're not wrong! It looks that way because it's a reentry vehicle. You put this thing in a low orbit which decays over the course of a few weeks until it eventually falls from space, then you go find it.

bamboozled 46 minutes ago | parent

Doesn't sound dangerous at all.

Pedro_Ribeiro 29 minutes ago | parent

You realize they know how to land these things right? Are you aware?

Polizeiposaune 1 hour ago | parent

The Starfall capsule has enough deltaV to deorbit, a heat shield, and parachutes.

So you tell them where to deliver it (anywhere on the planet that its orbit goes over..), they tell you when it will be arriving, and it reenters and lands there.

Article about a recent test (launched on a Falcon 9):

https://www.afrl.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4629122...

gustavus 1 hour ago | parent

Here's the thing I might not love Elon or everything he does and there are plenty of things to disagree with him about and I won't comment on him as a person

But I remember watching live when they launched a Tesla into Orbit, was it dumb, was it pointless and potentially wasteful? Sure, but that moment seeing humanity once again reach out to the stars I could feel it deep in my bones the space race was starting again.

Sure have lots of problems down here but the eternally yearning of humanity to extend out our hands to grasp the cosmos, to touch heaven is a pursuit I think highly worthwhile.

jtari3333 1 hour ago | parent

Elon turning the concept of space into the vanity project of a mentally unstable man child kinda sucks though. Makes it hard to give a shit knowing he is personally profitting from it.

hackyhacky 1 hour ago | parent

Not just profiting from it, but then reinvesting that money into subverting democracy

_dark_matter_ 1 hour ago | parent

*attempting to subvert democracy. But he may yet succeed.

psunavy03 1 hour ago | parent

I dunno, based on yesterday, the ROI on that seems to be kind of shit.

batperson 1 hour ago | parent

There's that one photo with a dummy driver in a red tesla and in the background you can see the earth. I think it's one of the best photos ever, part of it is the absurdity of the fact that it exists at all.

titzer 1 hour ago | parent

He denied it, but it was absolutely a reference to the opening sequence to the cult classic Heavy Metal.

aliasxneo 1 hour ago | parent

We just need someone who can pass the purity test and then we can all celebrate these things. Until then we're not allowed to feel happy about it.

trismus 47 minutes ago | parent

Seig heils do fail my purity test. I think the bar is reasonable and he has spectacularly failed to clear it.

bamboozled 44 minutes ago | parent

Purity tests, the guy has indirectly killed hundreds of thousands if not millions of kids through the cancellation of US AID and you're calling this a "purity test", maybe go fuck yourself ?

aliasxneo 42 minutes ago | parent

Well that's not very kind.

tohnjitor 39 minutes ago | parent

Where have millions of children died because of lack of USAID funds?

everyone 1 hour ago | parent

Yes, he turned space from an obscure realm of nerds into a cringe man-baby grifter domain.

dakial1 1 hour ago | parent

Here is something that I never imagined there was a use case for. Anyone has any idea of the commercial needs for such a device?

itishappy 1 hour ago | parent

Material science and manufacturing are two that have always seemed interesting to me, particularly monocrystalline stuff like semiconductors, optics, and metallurgy.

solyin 22 minutes ago | parent

Varda uses the low gravity environment of space to create medicines that work better than when they're made on Earth.

vessenes 1 hour ago | parent

There's a lot of fundamental science to be done in space; some forms of crystal are much easier to grow, chemical reactions and biological interactions etc. etc. For reference, it wasn't long ago NASA was trying to figure out if spiders could form webs in space.

psunavy03 1 hour ago | parent

Spoiler alert: they can.

kbutler 9 minutes ago | parent

"When gravity is involved, the golden orb spiders will happily build their asymmetrical webs, and sit facing downwards waiting for prey. In space, their webs were more symmetrical, however when there was light, the spiders used it as a reference point and built their webs as if the light was the opposite to 'downwards'."

https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-happens-to-spiders-... (with video)

antonvs 58 minutes ago | parent

This is an old idea, dating back to at least the 1940s. Many experiments have already been done in microgravity environments.

In the 1960s, they used sounding rockets to do experiments on how molten metals solidify in microgravity, with manufacturing applications in mind.

In the 1970s, they ran experiments, also on sounding rockets, on melting and solidifying materials without letting them touch a container: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19840059952

More recently, many microgravity experiments have been performed on the International Space Station. Experiments were done on protein crystal growth aboard the ISS in 2000, just a couple of years after it was launched. (I think it took some time to get the experimental facilities up and running.)

Another experiment on the

Here’s an assortment of links on the subject, starting with a good overview:

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/applications-within-re...

https://issnationallab.org/research-and-science/space-resear...

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/the-benefits-of-microg...

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001550

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20150023126

https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/manufacturingscience/...

whalesalad 1 hour ago | parent

worlds most expensive colocation rack

czhu12 1 hour ago | parent

Quite a bit of money have been raised on the premise that certain things can be easier to make in space than on earth due to gravity, which creates sedimentation

Semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, solar cell crystals, and artificial organs are on the short list. The International space station actually has done some experiments on this premise with promising results

anukin 1 hour ago | parent

This is amazing. Especially for biotech. A robot can do biotech in microgravity.

syntaxing 1 hour ago | parent

Space datacenters sounds dumb and impractical to me. Manufacturing semi conductor in space is actually a pretty interesting idea. I designed a few PVD, CVD, and IBE machines before. Ion thrusters from NASA are what semi conductors use as their source anyway. I can see the business proposition for processes like MBE that requires -12 pressure. It takes days, if not weeks to pump a chamber to those values.

15155 58 minutes ago | parent

Is it dumb and impractical when NIMBYs and folks directly opposed to your political agenda want to prevent any and all terrestrial datacenter development?

reissbaker 57 minutes ago | parent

FWIW, given how many places in the U.S. are passing datacenter bans, I'd expect space-based datacenters to make a lot more sense over the coming years just because it'll be illegal to build them anywhere else.

nradov 25 minutes ago | parent

I don't support data center bans but even if that happens in the US I'm pretty sure some other countries will welcome them. For AI inference workloads the network latency doesn't matter.

reaperducer 8 minutes ago | parent

I don't think the entire nation would ban data centers. The problem is that tech companies are building them on cheap land. Which usually means land that has little water and is better used for food or oxygen or things other than a massive one-story building.

Data centers in brownfields and urban environments see near-zero resistance. There are data centers in skyscrapers in the center of most major U.S. cities, and nobody cares.

Stop plowing down the forests, slurping up the aquifers, and digging up the prairies, and people will stop complaining.

nonethewiser 14 minutes ago | parent

You aren’t necessarily wrong but thats a dumb reason for space data centers to be good ideas.

DrewADesign 14 minutes ago | parent

The world is a very, very large place and I have a hard time imagining space would be an easier place to do anything. Nobody wants to live near petrochemical factories or aluminum smelters, either, but we’ve got lots of petrochemicals and aluminum. SV execs shredded any chance of cheap public cooperation by presenting like cartoonishly evil, patronizing, greedy big corporate bad guys from some shitty legal dramedy. They need to learn from their mistakes, develop some humility, and approach people with a serious financial proposition, like the oil industry in Alaska. That will absolutely be a lot cheaper than space.

azan_ 10 minutes ago | parent

> SV execs shredded any chance of cheap public cooperation by presenting like cartoonishly evil, patronizing, greedy big corporate bad guys from some shitty legal dramedy.

Did they though? From what I’ve read the places where they build get lots of money and infrastructure (not only DC-related) from them.

gmerc 10 minutes ago | parent

It’s still cheaper to build in a completely undeveloped desert with no neighbors and costly utility hookups than space. By orders of magnitude. That gap will never be materially close.

Space datacenters are just SDI2, a convenient bullshit to be able to funnel more money to campaign donors.

As long as there’s space on earth, Space Datacenters can never be economical. It’s rally that simple.

senordevnyc 9 minutes ago | parent

I don't really understand this perspective. The margins for data centers are such that they could pay massive subsidies to state and local governments and put them in the middle of nowhere with BTM power, and almost all that opposition would evaporate overnight. And you'd still come out way ahead of space-based DCs. They're not doing this yet because they don't have to.

dopa42365 5 minutes ago | parent

Nah, they'll just bite the bullet and build the data centers in remote Canada or Finland or somewhere else no one's complaining (ignore Greta as per usual) and tap into the local hydropower resources. Might take a tad longer and cost slightly more money than in [quasi-lawless US state], but other than that, no problem. Aluminium smelters (basically a solid form of electricity export) in Quebec and Siberia have been doing that for decades already (like 20GW private-ish hydropower).

cozzyd 1 hour ago | parent

It would be nice if SpaceX published GNSS pseudodistance/carrier phase from all Starlink satellites. It would give excellent realtime tomographic information about the ionosphere...

Qworg 1 hour ago | parent

I wonder where this leaves Varda? Tough to win when your ride is also your competitor.

everyone 1 hour ago | parent

Why is it called microgravity and not freefall? Cus afaik you are experiencing almost the same force of gravity as you would on the surface, you are just constantly falling.

nonethewiser 17 minutes ago | parent

Your kids, if you are fortunate enough to have any, are going to ask how you could have been bearish on SpaceX.

azan_ 10 minutes ago | parent

Bullish*

senordevnyc 8 minutes ago | parent

lol, you obviously don't have kids if you think that's the kind of stuff they ask you.

vlovich123 7 minutes ago | parent

Space is 12% of their overall revenue for Q3 2026 down from 20% in 2025 due to AI outpacing connectivity and space (connectivity is also more valuable than space). Investing in SpaceX is investing in an AI and ISP company that has a slightly profitable space R&D lab.

areoform 10 minutes ago | parent

So there are a few breakthrough therapeutics that rely on samples crystallized in microgravity. One of them is Keytruda or Pembrolizumab, a PD-1 inihibitor used as a neo-adjuvant in cancer therapy.

Historically, there was an issue with dosing pembrolizumab, as the manufacturing process was creating large uneven crystals that required physicians to process at the clinic to ensure proper dosing, but in microgravity? The crystallization is just gorgeous. absolutely beautiful

Take a look at this image, https://issnationallab.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/merck_...

Left hand side are the crystals grown on the ground. Right hand side is 0g.

That change made it possible to turn it into a safe injectable that patients could take at home. And they were able to recreate those conditions on Earth, https://issnationallab.org/iss360/merck-lab-publishes-pembro...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6889310/

This is more of a scientist said at a conference to another scientist kind of story, but apparently, they got some seed crystals from the ISS that are now used on Earth.

https://techconnectworld.com/World2025/a.php?i=602

You can do a lot more than make just seed crystals. It turns out that cells in our body are inside of a 3D environment with forces / tension acting in all directions. When you smoosh these in a lab (very literally) and try to observe how a drug behaves in a model cell / model organ, then it doesn't have the same physical constraints acting on it. BUT in 0g that's different. In 0g, cells behave slightly more similarly to how they behave in vivo and that could be a huge difference maker for drug discovery.

One breakthrough drug alone is worth more to humanity than what the ISS has cost across its lifespan.

https://iafastro.directory/iac/paper/id/89939/abstract-pdf/I...

tagami 7 minutes ago | parent

We've run a dozen missions in LEO aboard the ISS. Any steps to remove the friction to launch and increase the cadence is a good thing. Spending a few weeks in LEO missions like this typically land in the Australian outback

We do education outreach to K-16 learning institutions around the world. There are many things that can be studied in the near absence of gravity. Fluids are a huge area of research (surface tension, sedimentation, etc). We germinate seeds and look for genetic changes, people study brain organoids, artificial retinas, crystals, et al