17 thoughts on “Bootstrapping The Solar System”

1. This?
   https://medium.com/function-core/cislunar-economy-101-part-1-940f18818b2d#.1tltnmb6n

   Don’t leave out his middle name when googling. You get soccer players.

   1. Yes, sorry, forgot the link. Yeah, I’d imagine it’s a pretty common name in Spain.

2. It’s never been about technology. The F1 engine was a hand made piece of crap. We know this because we have a modern equivalent to compare it to. The moon shot was a unique point in history that demonstrated what was possible before technology really made it feasible. It was iron men in wooden ships.

   What we accomplished was due to attitude, not technology.

   The development they describe for the moon could be done right here on earth but isn’t. Why not? The flaw is leaving humans out of the equation. Machines are useful tools, but without humans there is no point.

3. I remember talks like this at the Princeton conferences 35 years ago.

   Did the Kool-Aid taste any better back then? 🙂

   This industry promises to revolutionize the human condition.

   I think such an industry would be the effective end of the human condition.

   1. It was much more theoretical back then.

   2. > I think such an industry would be the effective end of the human condition.

      Just as the agricultural revolution was, or the industrial revolution of the 1800s was, for a suitable definition of “human condition”. Babbage: “I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam!” Kool-aid, yes, until the right conditions arrive for them to happen.

      1. Luke: Your overconfidence is your weakness.
         The Emperor: Your faith in your friends technology is yours!

         It’s not that machines can or can’t be made to do things. It’s not understanding how things are done.

         There is an amazing amount of group think happening today. Confidence in technology (in a central planning sort of way) is a major part of societies current social problems while individualism (which allows for machines as tools) is considered ‘deplorable.’

         I am certainly no Luddite. I might have even found myself designing and programming such machines. They have been described and doable for many decades. But it is lack of faith in people pursuing their own interests that is holding us back.

         Sell the moon to people and it will get developed. People care about the things they own. But then govt. would tax it because people have allowed that to be the norm.

         I fear I am speaking to deaf ears.

         You sell it (at auction open to anybody, 1 plot per customer) because that gives you equitable distribution. Then people could trade so it is put into most productive use. Who gets the money? It doesn’t matter. Give it all to some lottery winner or the poor; it will eventually get distributed as part of the general economy. The important thing is to get space into the general economy by distributed ownership.

         You want a space race? Give ownership to any company that puts a human bootprint on any rock in the solar system.

         1. Who gets the money? It doesn’t matter.

            I thought you were using the money to fund transport?

            To me the pricing is off. Need to fund transport, surface amenities, or some mix of the two.

            It basically comes down to some other real estate transaction. If the state didn’t control it, they could grant authority/protection to entities who did. Doesn’t look like people can escape the HOA but once they are there, who knows where they will move to?

            The ideas expressed in the quote from the link make taking advantage of a planet like Mars very appealing.

            1. Yeah, I overstated it. Of the two parts getting distributed ownership is the more important. I would certainly use the money for transport (which seems obvious to me, but doesn’t seem to be catching on… somebody please explain why?)

         2. Land claims in the American West were based on developing or working the land. Deriving from that model a claim might be registered before launch, but could not be finalized until you land and start doing something of value with the claim.

      2. Yup! You are exactly right. What is the human condition? What is being ended?

         Depending how that is answered, ending the human condition is not a bad thing. One could argue that all of human innovation has been an exercise in ending the human condition but not humanity.

4. There has to be a catch. Self replicating robots sound great but they also sound free and nothing is free.

   1. It isn’t free. The process is powered by the sun and/or nuclear energy.

      Here’s a chapter from a Freeman Dyson essay/address delivered nearly 45 years ago in which he explains the idea:

      V. Self-Reproducing Machinery

      In parallel with our exploitation of biological engineering, we may achieve an equally profound industrial revolution by following the alternative route of self-reproducing machinery. Self-reproducing machines are devices which have the multiplying and self-organizing capabilities of living organisms but are built of metal and computers instead of protoplasm and brains. It was the mathematician John von Neumann who first demonstrated that self-reproducing machines are theoretically possible and sketched the logical principles underlying their construction. The basic components of a self-reproducing machine are precisely analogous to those of a living cell. The separation of function between genetic material (DNA) and enzymatic machinery (protein) in a cell corresponds exactly to the separation between software (computer programs) and hardware (machine tools) in a self-reproducing machine.

      I assume that in the next century, partly imitating the processes of life and partly improving on them, we shall learn to build self-reproducing machines programmed to multiply, differentiate, and coordinate their activities as skillfully as the cells of a higher organism such as a bird. After we have constructed a single egg machine and supplied it with the appropriate computer program, the egg and its progeny will grow into an industrial complex capable of performing economic tasks of arbitrary magnitude. It can build cities, plant gardens, construct electric power-generating facilities, launch space ships, or raise chickens. The overall programs and their execution will remain always under human control.

      The effects of such a powerful and versatile technology on human affairs are not easy to foresee. Used unwisely, it offers a rapid road to ecological disaster. Used wisely, it offers a rapid alleviation of all the purely economic difficulties of mankind. It offers to rich and poor nations alike a rate of growth of economic resources so rapid that economic constraints will no longer be dominant in determining how people are to live. In some sense this technology will constitute a permanent solution of man’s economic problems. Just as in the past, when economic problems cease to be pressing, we shall find no lack of fresh problems to take their place.

      It may well happen that on Earth, for aesthetic or ecological reasons, the use of self-reproducing machines will be strictly limited and the methods of biological engineering will be used instead wherever this alternative is feasible. For example, self-reproducing machines could proliferate in the oceans and collect minerals for man’s use, but we might prefer to have the same job done more quietly by corals and oysters. If economic needs were no longer paramount, we could afford a certain loss of efficiency for the sake of a harmonious environment. Self-reproducing machines may therefore play on Earth a subdued and self-effacing role.

      The true realm of self-reproducing machinery will be in those regions of the solar system that are inhospitable to man. Machines built of iron, aluminum, and silicon have no need of water. They can flourish and proliferate on the moon or on Mars or among the asteroids, carrying out gigantic industrial projects at no risk to the earth’s ecology. They will feed upon sunlight and rock, needing no other raw material for their construction. They will build in space the freely floating cities that Bernal imagined for human habitation. They will bring oceans of water from the satellites of the outer planets, where it is to be had in abundance, to the inner parts of the solar system where it is needed. Ultimately this water will make even the deserts of Mars bloom, and men will walk there under the open sky breathing air like the air of Earth.

      Taking a long view into the future, I foresee a division of the solar system into two domains. The inner domain, where sunlight is abundant and water scarce, will be the domain of great machines and governmental enterprises. Here self-reproducing machines will be obedient slaves, and men will be organized in giant bureaucracies. Outside and beyond the sunlit zone will be the outer domain, where water is abundant and sunlight scarce. In the outer domain lie the comets where trees and men will live in smaller communities, isolated from each other by huge distances. Here men will find once again the wilderness that they have lost on Earth. Groups of people will be free to live as they please, independent of governmental authorities. Outside and away from the sun, they will be able to wander forever on the open frontier that this planet no longer possesses.

      (/endQuote)

      You can read Freeman Dyson’s entire, terrific, essay The World, the Flesh, and The Devil (from 1972) here:
      http://impearls.blogspot.com/2002_11_10_archive.html

      1. Life that isn’t edible. That could never go wrong.. go wrong.. go wrong.

5. Thanks for sharing my article Rand! I’m happy to see it has had good reception. I’m planning to get a new part of the series every other week. Next Tuesday comes Part 2!

6. It doesn’t matter what the technology is, it doesn’t matter if the manufacturing is done wholly robotically or with people. The question is, manufacture what? What would you manufacture on the moon? Why would you do it? There is absolutely nothing you could manufacture on the moon that you could not manufacture more cheaply right here on earth. Assume you had the humanoid robots and self replicating technology that are described. Why bother to ship them all the way to the moon, and design them to work in hard vacuum, just to build cars on the moon? The only way to make this profitable is if there were some product, for which there was actually a market, that could only be made on the moon, probably something which, for some reason, required one sixth gravity to make. I can’t imagine what that would be, but as long as you can make it in full gravity and earth’s atmosphere, it is much cheaper to make it here than anywhere else.

   1. @ Carlos – great start. I’m looking forward to further articles.

      @ Michael – You are right, to a certain extent. It is (perversely) easier to image the mid-term future than what the very first steps will look like: we’ve all seen pictures and read descriptions of cities on the Moon, but a believable picture of the very first base/settlement is actually harder.

      I think your comment points out the reason: for that very first base, what are they going to sell?

      Let’s digress a bit, using the time honored practice of favored historical analogs. The people landing at Jamestown, 1607, wanted to improve their lives, particularly in a monetary way. This ranged from those with simple dreams of prospering by working their trades to some with giant egos thinking to get stinking rich, very quickly. It seems pretty naive to think of the expectation of finding piles of gold laying around, loading them on ships and going back to London; however, they did send one load of what turned out to be pyrite.

      It’s not that they didn’t want to find good stuff or make good stuff and export it. They did want to, and in fact it was in their charter as well. The problem was a huge disconnect between what they wanted and what actually happened. What happened, between lack of good information, lack of good planning, and just bad luck, is that they had a terrible time even surviving.

      So bringing in your question, what did they manufacture for export? Nothing. Nothing at all (at first, for a good deal longer than the Virginia (London) Company investors hoped). To paraphrase your statement, “There is absolutely nothing you could manufacture on in Jamestown that you could not manufacture more cheaply right here in London.”

      Is there anything we can take away? How do we reconcile what they wanted with what they actually got? Simply this: they gathered materials, and kept them for themselves. They built shelter, and used it themselves. They grew food, and ate it all. There was no surplus, no trade. This was subsistence, barely living. In fact, it was worse than that. They would not have survived at all if not for three separate resupply missions.

      Historical analogies are such fun; most of us use them when convenient . It’s considered even better form to know when to turn loose of them. Fast forward to the present. What’s the point? The point is that any Moon base or settlement will have a certain amount of time when they’re just starting, just struggling to keep the oxygen production going, air filters clean, solar panels operational and so on. They may thrive later, have a great economy, expand, but this doesn’t happen right way.

      I realize this is another way of saying the settlement won’t turn a profit any time soon, and I know this is unappealing to investors. In a way, it’s good that the Jamestown investors had such poor planning based on unrealistic expectations – if told to invest because it won’t give a fabulous return on a short timeframe, but will benefit mankind, would they have put down their money?

      Plans are never perfect, but it seems to me the best current lunar plans involve getting energy production going first, then processing water ice for propellants. Save the other volatiles for later, if possible (methane, ammonia). When a load is ready, send it up. You’re right: a tonne of LOX brought back to Earth would be kind of ridiculous. But a tonne of LOX to L1 or LEO, now that might be worth something.

      Cheers

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