[ExI] De-Orbiting Gold

spike spike66 at att.net
Mon May 21 18:10:03 UTC 2012



-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes

>...Most people believe that raw materials in space are currently worth
nothing.  Until after you convince them otherwise - which is probably going
to require the existence of fabrication equipment in space - you still have
no customers.

Ja!  Once we get semi-autonomous manufacturing, we will see everything in a
new light.  It is coming along, slowly, but it is coming.  Control systems
and algorithms are being developed over time.

The last three decades in mechanical engineering have been all about making
microprocessors smaller, faster and better.  Now they are really small, fast
and excellent.  So now I can see the next couple decades in mechanical
engineering being all about better automated control.  We can use these
wonderful tools the last three decades have given us, and really sail.  We
on this list may have been sidetracked to some extent by the notion of
nanotechnology, which didn't really play out the way we expected, or hasn't
yet.  But even without nanotech, machines can still build machines, even
copies of themselves, given the right raw materials, energy and software.
That's what we need before we can do much more in space than has already
been done.

spike




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