Incidentally, NASA commissioned a study back in 1980 about self-replicating factories harvesting lunar regolith. It's quite good, and goes into excellent detail

Incidentally, NASA commissioned a study back in 1980 about self-replicating factories harvesting lunar regolith. It's quite good, and goes into excellent detail: http://www.nss.org/settlement/moon/library/1982-SelfReplicatingLunarFactory.pdf http://www.nss.org/settlement/moon/library/1982-SelfReplicat... (Edited by Robert A. Freitas, who went on to write Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines)