Part 1 of the series looked at how revisiting the use of Clean Rooms could speed up production of space hardware as well as allowing more companies to be involved.

Here we look at how Third Party manufacturing can help improved payload delivery.

Third Party Manufacturing

Relaxing the clean room requirements opens the door for many more companies to start providing payload.

It is estimated there are around 3,000 companies working on products for space. Around 80% of these use clean rooms and in total produce approximately 3,000 tons per year. This is only a fraction of the thousands of tons of payload needed in the expanding space environment.

The amount of payload needed requires that many more companies become part of the space infrastructure.

Third party manufacturing will be critical in keeping up with the payload needed. With colonization, materials and equipment will need to be sent that are different from current payloads.

Factories that currently build tractors, dozers, lifters, drills, greenhouses, habitat modules, and all things needed for settlement could easily switch to producing Moon and Mars-ready versions of equipment by tweaking current factories as opposed to needing new ones.

Cybertruck is a good example. These are slated to be on the first Mars Starships in 2026. They are not built in clean rooms, just rooms that are clean.

While much of the funding may still come from NASA and official space agencies, there will be plenty of room for private space expansion as well.

This will lead to economic growth and new technologies for a new environment.

Next . . .

Part 3 of How to Ensure More Space Payload will look at the importance of partnerships.