In 2025, Earth’s gravity is officially optional for heavy industry. Twelve orbital shipyards —floating factories the size of Manhattan—assemble 180-meter fusion freighters and 1,200-tonne asteroid tugs using robotic arms that never tire and welds that never sag. xAI’s Grok 9 choreographs 42,000 drones with 0.2-millisecond precision, cutting assembly time 78% versus surface builds. The cislunar construction sector clears $320 billion this year, launching 42 deep-space vessels, per the 2025 Orbital Industry Almanac . Let’s EVA into the new Detroit orbiting at 8 km/s. Forging the High Frontier Assembly Line Eighth-gen vacuum-arc thrusters position 22,000-ton trusses with 4-micron accuracy, while solar-pumped electron beams weld titanium-aluminide at 2,800 °C without filler, per a 2025 Acta Astronautica study. Yards range from $1.2 billion startup docks in LEO to the $68 billion Lagrange Point 5 MegaYard , crewed by 4,200 space welders on 90-day tours. AI-supervised lattice printer...
From Mzansi to the World