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lacker comments on In order to greatly reduce X-risk, design self-replicating spacecraft without AGI - Less Wrong
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How would one even start "serious design work on a self-replicating spacecraft"? It seems like the technologies that would require to even begin serious design do not exist yet.
http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/GrowingLunarFactory1981.htm
I'd like to see a full conceptual design, especially for the software side. Each part seems doable with modern tools but the cost, development time and growth rate of this lunar factory needs a more detailed design study by people with industry experience. Fun to read but a bit hand-wave-y on the technical details.
There's a much longer report here:
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/
It's one part of the results of a NASA workshop on the concept. Another related part not included in this web reference is section 4, which involved melting down and re-using space hardware -- especially shuttle external tanks -- in an orbital manufacturing complex.
These are high-level engineering studies, basically back of the envelope calculations that prove the concept feasible. The growth rate calculations are probably fairly accurate, but cost & development times require a project plan which this is not. if you have a few million dollars you could get it costed out though.
Hmm, it is interesting that that exists but it seems like it is cannot have been very serious because it dates from over 30 years ago and no followup activity happened.
Serious? It's a paper constructed as part of an official NASA workshop, the participants of which are all respected people in their fields and still working.
Why hasn't more work happened in the time since? It has at places like Zyvex and the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing. But at NASA there were political issues that weren't addressed at all by people advocating for a self-replication programme then or since.
Freitas has more recently done a book-length survey of work on self-replicating machines before and after the NASA workshop. It's available online:
http://www.molecularassembler.com/KSRM.htm
(BTW the same fallacy could be committed against AGI or molecular nanotechnology, both of which date to the 50's but have had little followup activity since, except spurts of interest here and there.)
I think this is because Freitas and Drexler and others who might have pursued clanking replicators became concerned with nanotechnology instead. It seems to me that clanking replicators are much easier, because we already have all the tools and components to build them (screwdrivers, electic motors, microchips, etc.). Nanotechnology, while incorporating the same ideas, is far less feasible and may be seen as a red herring that has cost us 30 years of progress in self-replicating machines. Clanking replicators are also much less dangerous, because it is much easier to pull the plug or throw in a wrench when something goes wrong.
The difficulty is in managing the complexity of an entire factory system. The technology for automated mining and manufacturing exists but it's very expensive and risky to develop, and a bit creepy, so politicians won't fund the research. On Earth, human labor is cheap so there's no incentive for commercial development either.