It’s the day after Donald Trump announces his election victory, and a tech scout for NATO is peering into a small factory, about the size of a shoebox, designed to make semiconductors in space. has gone
Chris O’Connor, with his black bomber jacket and military haircut, has spent the past year scouring Europe for companies that would give NATO a technological edge over Russia and China. The region is racing to prepare for Trump 2.0. Here, in a gray industrial estate on the outskirts of Cardiff in Wales, he believes he has found one.
SpaceForge wants to send satellites equipped with small clean rooms into space, where they will grow semiconductor crystals before returning them safely to Earth.
A SpaceForge satellite could eventually produce enough semiconductor material to power tens of thousands of phones, estimates Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bacon, speaking in an office full of new hires. Bacon says he’s more interested in making chargers for electric cars to fight climate change, and the Space Forge’s potential is to eliminate all polluting industries from the planet.
But O’Connor is here because Space Forge has expressed interest from the €1 billion ($1 billion) NATO Innovation Fund (NIF). Manufacturing semiconductors in space, where there is no dirt, wind, or gravity, has the potential to provide efficiencies that could make advanced versions of military equipment such as radar.
“The distance that radar can travel—translating what it can see and how quickly it can do it—can be dramatically improved by using these materials,” says O’Connor, explaining Why was Space Forge among NIF’s first six investments? made public.
Along with Space Forge, the 1-year NIF’s investments include battlefield robots, a company that produces a lighter version of carbon fiber used in the construction of cars and rockets, and several space launches.
It’s the alliance’s first foray into the high-risk, high-reward world of venture capital, using its members’ money to fund experiments. Spaceforge has never made semiconductor materials in space. The only time the company tried to launch its satellites, the Virgin Orbit rocket failed to give them a ride, 177 kilometers above Earth before crashing into the ocean. O’Connor, one of the fund’s three partners, is serious about the fact that there is no guarantee that the investment will work out. “We’re mandated to take that risk,” he says.
