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/arch

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.