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I really believe (mostly) self replicating robots are necessary for any serious space colonization. Starting with just humans is way more effort than it's worth

I really believe (mostly) self replicating robots are necessary for any serious space colonization. Starting with just humans is way more effort than it's worth. Imagine just sending a few rockets to the moon. Waiting a few years, and then humans arrive with a base and infrastructure already set up for them. Self replicating robots don't necessarily need to be super high tech. A well stocked machine shop plus a simple robot operator could manufacture 99% of it's own equipment. I once saw an interesting paper proposing a series of small robots on tracks that could produce more tracks and more robots. Even if this process is very slow, it's exponential. Soon you have 10x as many robots as you started with. Then 100x, and then 1000x...

mindcrime 10y ago
I really believe (mostly) self replicating robots are necessary for any serious space colonization. Starting with just humans is way more effort than it's worth. Imagine just sending a few rockets to the moon. Waiting a few years, and then humans arrive with a base and infrastructure already set up for them. Last week's episode of Doctor Who had an interesting take on that scenario: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile_%28Doctor_Who%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile_%28Doctor_Who%29
deleted 10y ago
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tannhauser23 10y ago
Oh yeah, a NASA working group suggested this idea back in 1980: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19830007077.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/198300... The idea is to send an initial 'seed' factory that creates masses of simple robots that mine resources and, once critical mass has been achieved, build new factories. The ideas in the report seemed like science fiction four decades ago, but maybe they are more attainable today? I don't know enough about modern robots to know. This seems like an interesting area for a private company to tackle, since tech like this most certainly has applications here on Earth.

mindcrime 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

tannhauser23 10y ago

Oh yeah, a NASA working group suggested this idea back in 1980: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19830007077.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/198300... The idea is to send an initial 'seed' factory that creates masses of simple robots that mine resources and, once critical mass has been achieved, build new factories. The ideas in the report seemed like science fiction four decades ago, but maybe they are more attainable today? I don't know enough about modern robots to know. This seems like an interesting area for a private company to tackle, since tech like this most certainly has applications here on Earth.