> All those stories of hollowing out an asteroid and turning it into a habitat or generation ship for 50,000 people aren’t looking so prescient. :) It would be

> All those stories of hollowing out an asteroid and turning it into a habitat or generation ship for 50,000 people aren’t looking so prescient. :) It would be very interesting to figure out how far away we are from the technology to send a "Seed" probe to a large conglomerate asteroid, designed to replicate itself into thousands of builder-bots. Then the builders would slowly but surely turn the asteroid into millions of assembler-chunks consisting of layers of concrete and metal. Then those assemblers would connect to each other, turning into sections of habitat hull. Basically do it like Mother Nature does it: tiny building blocks that self-assemble into bigger building blocks that self-assemble into bigger building blocks, over and over. In other words, proteins into DNA/lipids/etc, DNA/lipids/etc into organelles, organelles into cells, cells into muscles/organs/etc. Not saying it would be squelchy organic technology, just that the process would look similar from a high level. Maybe it would look like self-assembling Lego! Seed probe -> Processing-bots -> raw material -> fibrous, metallic, and concrete-like Assemblers -> various types of building blocks.