I'm afraid I'm unable to judge how state-of-the-art Mars rover is, but I'll point out public-sector investment in space projects is much lower than it used to b

I'm afraid I'm unable to judge how state-of-the-art Mars rover is, but I'll point out public-sector investment in space projects is much lower than it used to be, such that it was possible for SpaceX to eat its lunch - beyond that I have no idea. > also quite a fundamental piece of technology I don't think long-term cable maintenance is considered important; whether a technology exists, and whether it was provided (at cost) is different. In most cases the electricity companies where obligated to provide maintenance to small communities, without profit, so did it on a least effort basis. > I just don't see a post-human future that is based on silicon: the manufacturing process is far too complex and poisonous to be viable as a self-replicating system I didn't say anything about self-replication; but AI controlled hardware could be self-replicating/sustaining in exactly the way human society is. In the meanwhile, If a sufficiently flexible robot can be remotely controlled by human operators, what stops multiple robots maintaining each other?