The Huntsville Alabama L5 Society (HAL5)
Your local chapter of the National Space Society (NSS)
presents
Space Industrialization as a Prerequisite for Space Settlement
With Special Guest
Jim Plaxco
NSS Space Ambassador and
Wednesday, October 8, 2025
5:30 pm to 7:00 pm Central Time
Downtown Huntsville Public Library Auditorium
915 Monroe Street (corner of St. Clair Ave.), Huntsville, Alabama 35801
The public is invited. Admission is FREE. Light refreshments from 5:00 to 5:30.
A dinner social at a local restaurant will follow the meeting.
For more info: call Ronnie Lajoie at 256-509-3833, or email to HAL5@hiwaay.net
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To watch via Zoom instead, you may join via this link after 5:20 PM:
https://go.nss.org/HAL5-Zoom-talk
Meeting ID: 649 817 3459, Passcode: 654321
Abstract
The mission and vision of the National Space Society is one that advocates for space settlement. In order for that vision to become a reality, it will be necessary to first have in place a large-scale system of space industrialization that is diverse in its product mix and economically sustainable. Space industrialization faces a range of unique challenges that set it apart from terrestrial industries. These include the environmental challenges, technological challenges, finance challenges, supply chain challenges, market challenges, regulatory challenges and profitability challenges. Uniting these individual challenges is ultimately the unit cost of production and whether that cost can be successfully recaptured via the combination of market price and market size for the products being produced. Prospects for success in the realm of space industrialization have been greatly improved by the advent of the Forth Industrial Revolution (4IR). 4IR combines additive manufacturing, interconnected autonomous systems, and enhanced sensor and manipulator technologies to make lights-out manufacturing operations a reality.
Applied to orbital factories, these technologies will dramatically lower the cost of space-based operations. This is particularly critical with respect to producing products for terrestrial consumption. While large-scale space industrialization is years away, there is action that can be taken today to expedite activities that would accelerate the development of space industrialization. These actions can be categorized as tax policy, regulatory policy, market policy, and R&D policy. Tax policies can be used to facilitate investment in relevant activities while regulatory policies can be used to lower the time and dollar costs of compliance. R&D policies would be used for promoting the development of relevant technologies and improving their technology readiness level (TRL). Market policies would be used to facilitate the development of markets for products manufactured in space, primarily by having government serve as an initial guaranteed customer. It is within the sphere of establishing the frameworks within which space industries would operate that NSS can have a positive impact of the prospects of success for space industrialization.
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Jim Plaxco is a National Space Society Space Ambassador and serves as the Space Ambassador Program's Economics SME. Jim is currently President of the Chicago Society for Space Studies and previously served as President of the Northern Illinois Space Advocacy and as a Vice President for both the National Space Society and the Planetary Studies Foundation. He also served as the Director of Information Systems for the National Space Society. As a digital artist, Jim has judged multiple space art contests for NASA, NSS, EIS, and the IAA.