Problem: According to the Environmental Protection Agency in 2018, 22% of all greenhouse gas emissions is from industry.
Solution: Space factory: a production and manufacturing company that only produces goods in space. This solution would be great because it would allow a way for pollution (which would normally be contained in earth) to be dispersed across the whole universe. Think of our pollution, then, as a drop of food-coloring in an ocean (space) rather than a drop of food-coloring in a cup (earth).
In his 1983 book The Stare, Isaac Asimov predicted such a world. Writing (important phrases in bold) that…
Most important, in a practical sense, would be the construction of factories that could make use of the special properties of space — high and low temperatures, hard radiation. Unlimited vacuum, zero gravity — to manufacture objects that could be difficult or impossible to manufacture on Earth, so that the world's technology might be totally transformed. In fact, projects might even be on the planning boards in 2019 to shift industries into orbit in a wholesale manner. Space, you see, is far more voluminous than Earth's surface is and it is therefore a far more useful repository for the waste that is inseparable from industry. Nor are there living things in space to suffer from the influx of waste. And the waste would not even remain in Earth's vicinity, but would be swept outward far beyond the asteroid belt by the solar wind. Earth will then be in a position to rid itself of the side-effects of industrialization, and yet without actually getting rid of its needed advantages. The factories will be gone, but not far, only a few thousand miles straight up.
Of course, Asimov is a science fiction writer; however, his ideas are interesting enough to be investigated in science reality. He predicted that we’d be producing in space by 2019, so why aren’t we? Broadly, the Global trends in space show that even if manufacturing isn’t feasible in the next 10 years, it should be within the next 10 decades. These trends include decreased launch costs, rising earth pollution, and the prevalence of large space-based companies.
Monetization: Selling space products on earth, or leasing the factory to earth companies that want to have access to a space factory but cannot from the cost.
Contributed by: Michael Bervell (Billion Dollar Startup Ideas)