§ 4.1.2 Vacuum
The pure vacuum environment in space offers many advantages in manufacturing. Vacuum prevents air contaminants. More importantly, however, it allows industrial processes which are difficult or completely infeasible on Earth due to interference by air and the expense and difficulty of producing vacuum in an industrial facility at the bottom of Earth's ocean of air.
The space vacuum is much purer than what is feasibly producible on Earth at great cost, and it's abundant and free in space.
Of course, if air is desired, a facility can be pressurized.
The Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center (SVEC) is an interesting WWW site on research and development into using the vacuum of space to develop new materials. They have flown experiments on the Shuttle and list "faster electronics components for computers" as one of their aims. A competitive advantage in the computer field would yield a huge market to help support space development.
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