In his iconic science fiction novel Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke describes how humanity first mistakes a large inbound spacecraft for an asteroid and then interacts with the mysterious alien ship. The founders of Made in Space, a small company with big dreams of manufacturing materials in space, are clearly fans of the book, because they have named their latest venture Project RAMA.

Made in Space's plan seems like science fiction as well: the company wants to turn asteroids into spacecraft. No, really, this isn't the latest book from Neal Stephenson. The company is serious—and so, apparently, is NASA. The agency has agreed to pay as much as $100,000 to Made in Space to conduct a feasibility study on the concept. “This definitely is in the category of sci-fi inspired stuff,” agreed Spencer Pitman, head of product strategy, in an interview with Ars. “But it’s guided by a long-term vision of the future, of living and working in space.”

Made in Space is the company that has put two 3D printers on the International Space Station to serve both the needs of NASA and paying customers who want products printed in microgravity. But that’s just the beginning. The company’s goal is to pioneer the manufacturing of materials in space, using resources in space. So if you want to use the lunar regolith to build solar cells on the Moon or create concrete from Martian soil, they want to help.

They’re interested in asteroids, too. Several companies, including Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, have talked about developing probes to travel to asteroids, surveying the asteroids for resources including water ice and precious metals, and bringing those materials back to the Earth-Moon system. But Made in Space wants to take those ideas one step further by turning the asteroid itself into a spacecraft to be piloted wherever needed, from the Moon to a colony on Mars.

Under an ideal scenario, Pitman said, a single small seed craft would launch from Earth or some system in orbit, fly to an asteroid, and land there. Using in situ resources, the seed craft—part resource scourer, part additive manufacturing system—would build spaceflight systems. These systems might include a simple mass driver that would use a catapult to launch bits of asteroids opposite the desired direction. It could also “print” springs and flywheels to store energy and build other systems to guide and navigate the asteroid.

The appeal of such a system is obvious. The mass fraction for blasting material off the surface of the Earth, the amount of propellant compared to the total rocket mass, is about 90 to 95 percent. That means only a tiny amount of a rocket’s total mass is stuff actually used in space. Having the metals or propellant needed for deep space exploration already waiting in space offers a huge advantage.

“That’s really where this could really become an enabling technology,” Pitman said. Imagine an automated spacecraft converting an asteroid into a spacecraft, and then processing the asteroid into its constituent valuable parts on the way to Mars or other destination. “Suddenly you’re contributing to the sustainability on Mars.”

Big hurdles remain, of course. The mathematics of landing on another body moving very quickly are not simple, and neither is using the regolith of an asteroid to print advanced materials. The AI for such a system would have to be both sophisticated and responsive. And you’d need to have confidence in the guidance and navigation systems developed on the asteroid, lest it crash into Earth, Mars, or wherever it was bound. “The real sort of meta challenge is taking all of these capabilities and bringing them into one aligned system for this purpose,” Pitman said.

Which is to say that while this would be a truly transformative technology, it remains a highly speculative one. And that's why NASA, through its Innovative Advanced Concepts program, provides small grants for sci-fi-like ideas that could revolutionize the way humans live in and travel through space. Other ideas funded recently include a fusion-enabled Pluto orbiter and lander and a “flat” spacecraft with an ultra-high power-to-weight ratio. This is a NASA program that enables dreamers to dream big.

Made in Space will have nine months to finish a white paper on the RAMA concept, after which the company would be eligible for a Phase II grant, which would allow for additional development of the idea.