The key obstacle here is startup money. If self-replication is economically sound, then a convincing business case could be made, leading to startup funding and a trillion-dollar business.

Again, the problem is a realistic economic assessment of development cost and predicted profit. In the current funding market, there is a lot of capital chasing very few good ideas. If there is money to be made here (a big if, given low cost of manual labor) then this could be a good opportunity.

"Mining the moon" is probably too expensive to start up. Better to start with a self-replicating robot factory on Earth.

I might look at this financial analysis as a side project. Contact me if you want to get involved and have sufficient industry experience to know what you don't know.