– Space Forge
The year is 2023, and DCD is sitting across from Joshua Western, CEO of Space Forge, at the Space Wales booth at the Space-Comm conference, then still held in Farnborough. We’ve been directed to the powwow with the up-and-coming executive, who has just started integrating his company-branded jacket into his look – like a Jensen Huang of the stars.
You get your fill of cranks and kooks in this business, and Western, a composed and charismatic speaker, is giving neither, as he describes his company’s vision for making chip materials in orbit.
Doubtless, some of the numbers talked about, especially the earlier ones, won’t add up. Western casually mentions a 10-100 times improvement in semiconductor performance in 2023, a projection he seems to have stopped repeating in more recent years. But the idea of manufacturing semiconductor crystals in space remains an alluring prospect, and one that could soon become a reality.
Heating up in the Cold War
