Duct tape, a towel, a flight manual and a plastic bag were the motley selection of objects that famously saved the crew of Apollo 13 on their hasty return to earth in 1970. Like an anti-gravity episode of Bitsa, crammed in a lunar module, the team had to use whatever was at hand to make a square carbon dioxide filter fit on a circular pump, or else risk dying of CO2 poisoning.
"There have been a lot of near misses in the past with spaceflight," says Jason Dunn, co-founder of Made in Space, a company that aims to put an end to such jerry-rigged repairs with the next frontier of digitised DIY: 3D-printing in space. "When we start going out to Mars and back to the moon and going to asteroids, it's going to be even more important that astronauts have printers with them."
Founded in 2010, out of the Singularity University at Nasa Ames research centre in Silicon Valley, the company has been working for the last three years to make additive manufacturing work at zero gravity - which is harder than it might sound. The technique of squeezing layers of molten plastic from a nozzle to build up an object, like toothpaste from a tube, might now be ubiquitous, with build-your-own 3D-printers being snapped up by digital hobbyists for under $100. But in space, things aren't quite so simple.
"In zero gravity, thermal properties work differently," says Dunn. "Convection doesn't work the same ... There are interesting tricks we came up with to make sure we're keeping the hot things hot and the cold things cold."
Every moving part - the cogs, belts and gears that naturally stay in place on Earth - also had to be secured. "With a 3D printer, if something floats by a fraction of a millimetre, that can completely ruin a print," says Dunn. "You have to make sure things are allowed to move when they need to and be very rigid when they need to be."
A little larger than a shoe box, the printer has a metal shell with a glass window that offers a view of the goings-on within, so the crew can monitor the progress of the clips, buckles and containers they are printing. The designers say their machine could print anything from toilet pipes to life-saving tools, and imagine a future of game-changing capabilities - including the ability to manufacture kilometre-long megastructures that could not be launched from Earth, as well as construct entire spacecraft mined from asteroid materials.
The equipment recently underwent rounds of micro-gravity testing on a modified Boeing 727, which proved it could work in conditions found in space, on the Moon and on Mars. The final version of the printer will be shipped to the International Space Station next year, where it should be able to print around 30% of the spare parts needed on board.
"As Nasa ventures further into space, whether redirecting an asteroid or sending humans to Mars, we'll need transformative technology to reduce cargo weight and volume," says Nasa administrator Charles Bolden. "In the future, perhaps astronauts will be able to print the tools or components they need while in space."
While the ability to print replacement parts also exists on Earth, many 3D-printer users are instead devoting their time to creating novelty trinkets. The revolutionary democratisation of manufacturing has led to a proliferation of plastic puzzles and fantasy figurines. Judging by the popularity of videos showing astronaut Chris Hadfield's anti-gravity escapades with peanut butter, flannels and guitars, perhaps the space station's 3D-printer will take on a new role as an orbiting entertainment machine, spurting out astro-baubles on demand. Major Tim Peake - the UK's first astronaut to be sent to the space station in 2015 - had better get practising his 3D SketchUp skills now.
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