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Are there fundamental limits to mechanical reliability? Towards the end the article talks about how the initial startup period for the colony will be the harde

Are there fundamental limits to mechanical reliability? Towards the end the article talks about how the initial startup period for the colony will be the hardest. If the startup process were automated, no one would be at risk. Send the first colonists once the tomatoes are ripe. But is there a practical limit on how much can be automated, remotely? Are we approaching (or have we already passed?) a singularity in the human race based on our ability to product fault tolerant ball race bearings and machine screws that never snap?

qayxc 5y ago
> Are we approaching (or have we already passed?) a singularity in the human race based on our ability to product fault tolerant ball race bearings and machine screws that never snap? I guess not [0]. I don't know of any artificial autonomous self-diagnosing and self-repairing mechanism either. The current approach is to hope that either nothing breaks or that built-in redundancy is sufficient to compensate for mechanical failures. [0] https://safety4sea.com/autonomous-vessel-prototype-pauses-atlantic-crossing-due-to-mechanical-problem/ https://safety4sea.com/autonomous-vessel-prototype-pauses-at...
- toss1 5y ago
  Yup, and notice that the autonomous voyage was "interrupted by a small mechanical problem" and "no one on board to repair". It doesn't take much to shut down mechanical devices. The problem with the "machine screws that never snap" is that we are still dealing with physical materials - everything is a trade-off; we could spec a screw with 100x the strength of the max expected load instead of a standard 2.4x margin, but we've probably blown both the weight and dollar budgets, and/or merely shifted the failure point to another component. And this doesn't even count for disasters to the mission from unexpected events. Seems that we'll need to get well into the realm of self-repair and self-replicating devices before such massive remote autonomous are reasonably feasible.

qayxc 5y ago

> Are we approaching (or have we already passed?) a singularity in the human race based on our ability to product fault tolerant ball race bearings and machine screws that never snap? I guess not [0]. I don't know of any artificial autonomous self-diagnosing and self-repairing mechanism either. The current approach is to hope that either nothing breaks or that built-in redundancy is sufficient to compensate for mechanical failures. [0] https://safety4sea.com/autonomous-vessel-prototype-pauses-atlantic-crossing-due-to-mechanical-problem/ https://safety4sea.com/autonomous-vessel-prototype-pauses-at...

toss1 5y ago
Yup, and notice that the autonomous voyage was "interrupted by a small mechanical problem" and "no one on board to repair". It doesn't take much to shut down mechanical devices. The problem with the "machine screws that never snap" is that we are still dealing with physical materials - everything is a trade-off; we could spec a screw with 100x the strength of the max expected load instead of a standard 2.4x margin, but we've probably blown both the weight and dollar budgets, and/or merely shifted the failure point to another component. And this doesn't even count for disasters to the mission from unexpected events. Seems that we'll need to get well into the realm of self-repair and self-replicating devices before such massive remote autonomous are reasonably feasible.