Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!uunet!mitel!sce!cognos!geovision!alastair From: alastair@geovision.uucp (Alastair Mayer) Newsgroups: sci.space Subject: Re: Soviet Semiconductor Manufacturing Message-ID: <544@geovision.UUCP> Date: 31 Jan 89 16:17:40 GMT References: <8901260516.AA04149@crash.cts.com> <14016@cup.portal.com> Reply-To: alastair@geovision.UUCP (Alastair Mayer) Organization: GeoVision Corp, Ottawa, Canada Lines: 17 >situations. Still I doubt that the soviets will make a major industry out of >micrograv. crystals, but if they make a few super applications with them it Actually, according to one report (which was quoted to me verbally - it'd take a while for me to dig up the specific reference), the Sovs expect to make space materials processing (primarily semiconductors) a mult-tens of billions of rubles (whatever that works out to in billions of dollars) a year industry, and do that within the next 10 years. Already they are doing a *lot* with space-grown semiconductors. They've had equipment for this aboard space stations for years, long before Mir. At least some of this space-grown gallium arsenide has gone into solar panels for the space station - possibly the stuff rejected for IC use. -- "The problem is not that spaceflight is expensive, | Alastair J.W. Mayer therefore only the government can do it, but that | alastair@geovision.UUCP only the government is doing spaceflight, therefore | al@BIX it is expensive." |