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Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Remotely Controlled Manipulators in Space
Message-ID: <6369@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 6-Feb-86 14:51:59 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.6369
Posted: Thu Feb  6 14:51:59 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Feb-86 14:51:59 EST
References: <8602020218.AA04732@s1-b.arpa>, <622@riccb.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 20

> > . . . a "seed" manufacturing facility . . . could be put in place . . .
> > The facility would be capable of reproducing itself . . .
> 
> What, you just drop it on the lunar surface and it installs itself?
> That would be multiplying the complexity of the thing considerably.
> And of course you build in a Junior Alchemy set so that it can transform
> lunar soil into titanium.  Oh, not impossible maybe, but certainly
> a couple centuries into the future.  And many quadrillions of dollars.

Actually, it's not very hard at all, or terribly expensive, *if* you send
along a handful of humans to do the hard parts.  This problem has been
studied.  It is not terribly difficult to do 90% or more of the work by
remote control or automation.  The remaining 10% or so is vastly harder
to handle that way, and the most economical approach is to use humans
to fill in the gap.  If the human end of the operation is a colony rather
than a base (key difference:  colonists don't expect to come back), it is
not particularly expensive.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry