What exactly do you want to do in the near term? Solar collectors in space and microwave beams back to earth?
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Replying to @RokoMijicUK
Self-replicating doohickies on near-Earth asteroids, for starters.
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Replying to @gcochran99 @RokoMijicUK
We would start with self-replicating machines on Earth: far easier to troubleshoot. We'd fill the deserts with self-replicating solar generators, or be heading there fast, before we made the leap to asteroids.
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Replying to @rowlandkyles @RokoMijicUK
The replication time would be far shorter on an asteroid - it has to be sturdy enough for 0.001 g, rather than 1 g. Replication time is crucial.
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Replying to @gcochran99 @rowlandkyles
Sturdiness is not really the limiting factor. Let's be clear, RepRap is a plastic 3D printer that can make its own plastic parts from nice clean plastic feedstock. But not its motors, wires, chips etc. It also can't assemble itself.
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Replying to @RokoMijicUK @rowlandkyles
Sure it is: it determines how much mass you need to process.
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Replying to @gcochran99 @RokoMijicUK
Are you envisioning gossamer glass self-replicating structures? Maybe generating ultrathin fibers from regolith in a solar crucible.... That reduces structural requirements to be sure, but frankly the structural requirements seem like a trivial part of the difficulty.
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The thing needs to gather and refine resources reasonably efficiently. Practically speaking, that seems to mean a lot of digging. I can imagine some construct that 'unspools' an asteroid from the outside, but it just seems doubtful that it will work...
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Replying to @rowlandkyles @RokoMijicUK
In my experience, guys that know technology X say sure, we could do X, but have doubts about the rest.
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The good thing about 3d printers is that they offer an approach that short-circuits the problem of closure - making the tools that make the tools that make the tools, etc. Von Tiesenhausen worried about closure, but we can see the way forward.
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Time for an education in the nitty gritty nasties of 3D printing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyYcomX7Lus … "...after the elegant first step, which is laser melting the layers, comes a bit of an ugly back room operation, which nobody ever talks about..."
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