Space Colonization Essay

Self-replicating machines offer an underexplored potential to rapidly establish an interplanetary economy.

For the rest of this essay such machines will be called Neumanns.

Background
Self replicating machines have been proposed as early as the 1500s, however the first serious proposals of it were from John Von Neumann in the late 1940s. In 2008 a breakthrough occurred with RepRap, an open source 3D printer which printed most of its own parts.

However the project was incomplete in its achievement, due to being unable to print much of its more complicated components such as microcontrollers.

RepRap researchers have attempted various means of developing necessary microcontrollers and other electronic components including printed electronics, but have not yet had success in developing the necessary technology.

Design
Neumanns would not necessarily need to be reliable in their functions. Their purpose is not to be reliable, their purpose would be to sequester resources for easy use by humans.

If a failing unit is capable of being consumed by a functioning one then the only losses will be the energy expense of producing the unit, and the opportunity cost of a failed unit being unable to produce new units.

Energy efficiency howerver may be a fairly high priority, as energy may be scarce in the Asteroid belt. Depending on how technology advances it could be highly abundant or highly scarce.

Astrography


Asteroid Belt, Jupiter Trojans, Hilda Asteroids, Saturn Rings

Propulsion
Propulsion can be very slow, these machines will move between asteroids slowly and trade slowly to save energy. You don't need much energy to get anywhere in the solar system. The Interplanetary transport network of moving through lagrange points would be essential to such travel, and massive amounts of resource shipments could move through these points over several years

Ongoing cost to Earth
Ongoing costs to Earth will be minimal in such a scheme. Such a system can be theoretically set up with no ongoing maintainance costs, however ongoing software updates and delivering components for physical upgrades could provide benefits for developing the region

Software updates
Software updates are the easiest way to enhance Neumanns. As they will be constantly sending back new information to Earth, easy fixes can be implemented in response to simple problems.

Physical upgrades
Physical upgrades may be necessary in the event of new components which are necessary to manuacture themselves. This will be likely in the development of nanotechnology upgrades.

Future Projects
Neumanns could be used to perform various other projects which would be more complex and likely involve more supervision

Metal mining from Mercury
Metals could be mined from Mercury. This will be expensive and likely only an economical option when the metals of the asteroids are exhausted