[ExI] De-Orbiting Gold

[Kelly Anderson]

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 2:29 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
> An example would be dock with an dead satellite, strip off the aluminized
> mylar, grind it, recover the aluminum, make a solar sail using the design I
> proposed in a technical paper last fall.  That sail had a microprocessor
> (which we would be allowed to make down here and take along) and was guided
> by three LCD variable reflectors (which could also be made down here.  That
> design was 15 cm across and had a mass of one gram, but I would be open
> minded on what qualifies as “anything useful.”  Making some kind of
> semi-autonomous on-orbit manufacturing device is a good way forward from
> here and a cool interesting new technical challenge.

Here's an interesting challenge... build a machine that can go into
space, intercept space junk, and create a copy of itself which then
goes off looking for more space junk... :-)  Kind of a grey goo
approach to the problem... without the nanotech part.

-Kelly