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If this works (big if) and they are able to essentially build a solar panel factory in a box and if lab grown protein is both able to scale and be shipped in a

If this works (big if) and they are able to essentially build a solar panel factory in a box and if lab grown protein is both able to scale and be shipped in a modular structure (big if) they have effectively solved or close to solved 2 of the largest challenges involved in establishing moon or mars based colonies. Food and power. Science fiction is sneaking up on us. If it can be automated you could essentially launch space craft factories that land and build solar panels prior to humans arriving. Far fetched but neat to think about. Approaching von Neumann probe territory

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
panick21_ 4y ago
There is also a cool idea about building robots that use things like ice to build themselves bodies and can build versions of themselves. You likely still have to send along a whole lot of electronics pars because making those on the spot would be difficult.
- chairhairair 4y ago
  Yes making ice-based self-replicating robots is “difficult”…
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    We are also don't have much real research into actually trying it. And it doesn't have to all the way self-replicating. It more like using local materials to build the heavy parts of robots. Maybe those robots then couldn't build another one of themselves.
    - hef19898 4y ago
      Unless space ice has mechanical properties comparable to steel, I don't see the point in even trying...
      - dotnet00 4y ago
        While ice is a somewhat extreme example, the idea of bringing over the electronics and using local materials to put together whatever structural components are needed isn't that crazy. It'd save a lot of mass, and things like 3d printers can produce them with reasonable precision. There already is a decent amount of research into the prospect of 3d printing structures with Lunar or Martian regolith, so structural components for robots or machines don't seem too crazy.
      - panick21_ 4y ago
        I don't remember the details and I don't remember the exact place where I have heard and interview with somebody that works on this stuff. They wouldn't use pure ice. But in cold places, with ice mixed with some other materials you can actually make quite good materials. Consider that in most places gravity is much lower then on earth so it doesn't need to be carbon fiber to be useful.
        hef19898 4y ago
        I said steel, not carbon fibre. And even in zero-g things still have mass to them that needs to be handled, don't they?
        panick21_ 4y ago
        I know what you said, I just used carbon fibre to make a point is. You don't always need the best materials to have something useful. Yes things still have mass but if you are building a robot that moves around there is a big difference in what kind of quality structural materials you need for the robot to be viable. Part of the research that would go into such project would be to look at what local resources are, and how to make them into useful materials. For example, using ice in combination with some filler material has been shown to be quite usable in cold temperatures. The exact materials you would use depend on where you would want to use this kind of system. Maybe in the far future these kind of system would look around to analyses the environment and make smart choices about what materials to use to build themselves.
- Vikerchu 4y ago
  Fusion\fission refining? ??????
px43 4y ago
There's basically zero carbon on the moon. A ton of it on Mars though (lots of CO2 ice). Our moon is something like 45% silica on the surface. That is a fuckton of silicon. Step one is definitely making a solar panel factory, and then using that power to smelt aluminum, iron, titanium, etc. It seems to me that the moon would make for a good floating semiconductor fab, and eventually, data center. It would be great for making large structures for spacecraft, since the materials are right, and the lower gravity makes it much cheaper to get the parts into space. It doesn't make sense for a ton of people to live there, since we would have to bring all of our own carbon, which is kind of important for biological life.
- jbattle 4y ago
  Assuming abundant power and effective carbon recapture / recycling, how much carbon do you need per person? If it was on the order of 50 lbs of carbon per person, and that could be infinitely recycled, that doesn't seem wildly onerous. It looks like the average person exhales about 2 pounds of carbon per day, so that's a very rough baseline in terms of carbon needs. Is there a technology available now or soon that can scrub carbon out of the ambient air and capture that in an easy to reuse medium?
  - px43 4y ago
    ~~Yeah, I think carbon recycling can be pretty good. They've been doing it on submarines for a while.~~ (edit: nevermind, I was confused about the submarine thing, the user "idlewords" below has a lot of good commentary about this) At any given moment, any human is about 18% carbon. Carbon is also pretty important in *carbo*hydrates. Any plants that we would grow would need a ton of carbon. It can be done, but any moon colony will basically always be dependent on getting extra carbon from Earth, so it can never be "self sufficient" in the way that Mars can eventually be. It is kind of funny that on Earth, we're obsessed with capturing and burying as much carbon as possible, when it's going to be an incredibly valuable resource on the moon, assuming that a bunch of people are gong to want to live there.
    - wonderwonder 4y ago
Teever 4y ago
My personal take on things is that we're far closer to von Neumann probe level technology than anyone seems to be aware of, and we're just sort of sleep walking into a crazy new future. I wish more people on HN would talk about von Nuemann probes and things like seed factories[0] instead of smartphone apps and people pooping on the streets of San Francisco. [0] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Seed_Factories https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Seed_Factories
- wonderwonder 4y ago
  This looks like a good read, thanks for this. I had not heard of a seed factory before.
  - Teever 4y ago
    Yeah, I've tried posting it on HN before but it never gained any traction. It is a fascinating read and the author is active on reddit[0] and he'll answer any questions you have about the book. I just reposted it[1], Let's see if it gets some comments this time. [0] https://www.reddit.com/user/danielravennest https://www.reddit.com/user/danielravennest [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34795006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34795006
- gene-h 4y ago
  Making solar cells like this is a nice first step to making self replicating machines. Being able to make solar cells is especially interesting because these are semiconductor devices, so producing control electronics may be possible too. But really what needs to be solved for self-replicating machines is determining a way to make actuators. On the Moon this is harder due to the difficulty of making bearings and gears. Because of vacuum welding making bearings is much more difficult. While solid lubricants do exist, it's difficult to obtain the materials necessary on the Moon. Traditional machining and polishing processes don't work well in a vacuum either due to vacuum welding and the inability to use lubricant. If we wish to carry out said processes in a pressurized environment we run into another problem: seals. In order to make good seals we need elastomers, and elastomers require elements such as hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen which are difficult to obtain on the Moon.
gene-h 4y ago
The approach they develop likely doesn't work on Mars. They rely on the ambient high vacuum environment of the Moon as part of the silicon purification step and likely for deposition of the solar cells. Mars is not high vacuum.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  I listen to a podcast by somebody that works for a company that does this kind of thing. I think he said Mars atmo is so thin that many things actually work quite well based on their calculation, but it does lead to problems in some situations.
14 4y ago
I too thought this is like something out of Star Trek how amazing would this be if it indeed works.
idlewords 4y ago
The second technology you mention is a bit of a non sequitur. What lab grown protein, shipped where? Right now there is no nutritionally complete food of any kind that is shelf-stable for three years; it's a major open problem in long-duration space flight.
- wonderwonder 4y ago
  Food, power, shelter and air are essentially the big issues for space colonization. With the lab protein I was speaking of the possibility of shipping a close to self sustaining bio reactor in a box to a colony to solve for the food issue. I mentioned this as it's an evolving technology that may be closer to prime time at the same time as the solar panels concept the article mentioned.
  - outworlder 4y ago
    > I mentioned this as it's an evolving technology that may be closer to prime time Unlikely. We have yet to master nutrition when it comes from plants, it will be even worse for a bioreactor. Unfortunately, the list of food ingredients that you see listed in minimum recommended intake values is woefully incomplete. There's a whole bunch of micronutrients we get from food that are difficult to replicate. Bioreactors could be useful for making supplements (say, Omega-3) to offset specific deficiencies.
  - idlewords 4y ago
    Consider that such a technology would make anyone who invented it on Earth a billionaire many times over. But it's hard to do, even with plants and gravity.
- outworlder 4y ago
  And even if we did have nutritionally stable food for this long, there's a growing amount of evidence that even just mechanical food processing is enough to make it _unhealthy_ – if it comprises the majority of your consumption – and that it causes metabolic problems (irrespective of additives). And that's on Earth. If we are to eat just processed food in space, we'll need a lot more research on this. It would be better if we just grew food from plants. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8747021/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8747021/
TheRealNGenius 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

panick21_ 4y ago

There is also a cool idea about building robots that use things like ice to build themselves bodies and can build versions of themselves. You likely still have to send along a whole lot of electronics pars because making those on the spot would be difficult.

chairhairair 4y ago
Yes making ice-based self-replicating robots is “difficult”…
- panick21_ 4y ago
  We are also don't have much real research into actually trying it. And it doesn't have to all the way self-replicating. It more like using local materials to build the heavy parts of robots. Maybe those robots then couldn't build another one of themselves.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Unless space ice has mechanical properties comparable to steel, I don't see the point in even trying...
    - dotnet00 4y ago
      While ice is a somewhat extreme example, the idea of bringing over the electronics and using local materials to put together whatever structural components are needed isn't that crazy. It'd save a lot of mass, and things like 3d printers can produce them with reasonable precision. There already is a decent amount of research into the prospect of 3d printing structures with Lunar or Martian regolith, so structural components for robots or machines don't seem too crazy.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      I don't remember the details and I don't remember the exact place where I have heard and interview with somebody that works on this stuff. They wouldn't use pure ice. But in cold places, with ice mixed with some other materials you can actually make quite good materials. Consider that in most places gravity is much lower then on earth so it doesn't need to be carbon fiber to be useful.
      - hef19898 4y ago
        I said steel, not carbon fibre. And even in zero-g things still have mass to them that needs to be handled, don't they?
        panick21_ 4y ago
        I know what you said, I just used carbon fibre to make a point is. You don't always need the best materials to have something useful. Yes things still have mass but if you are building a robot that moves around there is a big difference in what kind of quality structural materials you need for the robot to be viable. Part of the research that would go into such project would be to look at what local resources are, and how to make them into useful materials. For example, using ice in combination with some filler material has been shown to be quite usable in cold temperatures. The exact materials you would use depend on where you would want to use this kind of system. Maybe in the far future these kind of system would look around to analyses the environment and make smart choices about what materials to use to build themselves.
Vikerchu 4y ago
Fusion\fission refining? ??????

px43 4y ago

There's basically zero carbon on the moon. A ton of it on Mars though (lots of CO2 ice). Our moon is something like 45% silica on the surface. That is a fuckton of silicon. Step one is definitely making a solar panel factory, and then using that power to smelt aluminum, iron, titanium, etc. It seems to me that the moon would make for a good floating semiconductor fab, and eventually, data center. It would be great for making large structures for spacecraft, since the materials are right, and the lower gravity makes it much cheaper to get the parts into space. It doesn't make sense for a ton of people to live there, since we would have to bring all of our own carbon, which is kind of important for biological life.

jbattle 4y ago
Assuming abundant power and effective carbon recapture / recycling, how much carbon do you need per person? If it was on the order of 50 lbs of carbon per person, and that could be infinitely recycled, that doesn't seem wildly onerous. It looks like the average person exhales about 2 pounds of carbon per day, so that's a very rough baseline in terms of carbon needs. Is there a technology available now or soon that can scrub carbon out of the ambient air and capture that in an easy to reuse medium?
- px43 4y ago
  ~~Yeah, I think carbon recycling can be pretty good. They've been doing it on submarines for a while.~~ (edit: nevermind, I was confused about the submarine thing, the user "idlewords" below has a lot of good commentary about this) At any given moment, any human is about 18% carbon. Carbon is also pretty important in *carbo*hydrates. Any plants that we would grow would need a ton of carbon. It can be done, but any moon colony will basically always be dependent on getting extra carbon from Earth, so it can never be "self sufficient" in the way that Mars can eventually be. It is kind of funny that on Earth, we're obsessed with capturing and burying as much carbon as possible, when it's going to be an incredibly valuable resource on the moon, assuming that a bunch of people are gong to want to live there.
  - wonderwonder 4y ago

Teever 4y ago

My personal take on things is that we're far closer to von Neumann probe level technology than anyone seems to be aware of, and we're just sort of sleep walking into a crazy new future. I wish more people on HN would talk about von Nuemann probes and things like seed factories[0] instead of smartphone apps and people pooping on the streets of San Francisco. [0] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Seed_Factories https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Seed_Factories

wonderwonder 4y ago
This looks like a good read, thanks for this. I had not heard of a seed factory before.
- Teever 4y ago
  Yeah, I've tried posting it on HN before but it never gained any traction. It is a fascinating read and the author is active on reddit[0] and he'll answer any questions you have about the book. I just reposted it[1], Let's see if it gets some comments this time. [0] https://www.reddit.com/user/danielravennest https://www.reddit.com/user/danielravennest [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34795006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34795006
gene-h 4y ago
Making solar cells like this is a nice first step to making self replicating machines. Being able to make solar cells is especially interesting because these are semiconductor devices, so producing control electronics may be possible too. But really what needs to be solved for self-replicating machines is determining a way to make actuators. On the Moon this is harder due to the difficulty of making bearings and gears. Because of vacuum welding making bearings is much more difficult. While solid lubricants do exist, it's difficult to obtain the materials necessary on the Moon. Traditional machining and polishing processes don't work well in a vacuum either due to vacuum welding and the inability to use lubricant. If we wish to carry out said processes in a pressurized environment we run into another problem: seals. In order to make good seals we need elastomers, and elastomers require elements such as hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen which are difficult to obtain on the Moon.

gene-h 4y ago

The approach they develop likely doesn't work on Mars. They rely on the ambient high vacuum environment of the Moon as part of the silicon purification step and likely for deposition of the solar cells. Mars is not high vacuum.

panick21_ 4y ago
I listen to a podcast by somebody that works for a company that does this kind of thing. I think he said Mars atmo is so thin that many things actually work quite well based on their calculation, but it does lead to problems in some situations.

14 4y ago

I too thought this is like something out of Star Trek how amazing would this be if it indeed works.

idlewords 4y ago

The second technology you mention is a bit of a non sequitur. What lab grown protein, shipped where? Right now there is no nutritionally complete food of any kind that is shelf-stable for three years; it's a major open problem in long-duration space flight.

wonderwonder 4y ago
Food, power, shelter and air are essentially the big issues for space colonization. With the lab protein I was speaking of the possibility of shipping a close to self sustaining bio reactor in a box to a colony to solve for the food issue. I mentioned this as it's an evolving technology that may be closer to prime time at the same time as the solar panels concept the article mentioned.
- outworlder 4y ago
  > I mentioned this as it's an evolving technology that may be closer to prime time Unlikely. We have yet to master nutrition when it comes from plants, it will be even worse for a bioreactor. Unfortunately, the list of food ingredients that you see listed in minimum recommended intake values is woefully incomplete. There's a whole bunch of micronutrients we get from food that are difficult to replicate. Bioreactors could be useful for making supplements (say, Omega-3) to offset specific deficiencies.
- idlewords 4y ago
  Consider that such a technology would make anyone who invented it on Earth a billionaire many times over. But it's hard to do, even with plants and gravity.
outworlder 4y ago
And even if we did have nutritionally stable food for this long, there's a growing amount of evidence that even just mechanical food processing is enough to make it _unhealthy_ – if it comprises the majority of your consumption – and that it causes metabolic problems (irrespective of additives). And that's on Earth. If we are to eat just processed food in space, we'll need a lot more research on this. It would be better if we just grew food from plants. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8747021/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8747021/

TheRealNGenius 4y ago

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