Proportions mod: So confusing!

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
I debate for the sake of debate, whether or not I truly agree with a position. I also don't think that it's that far off in the future where we will be able to send off an automated factory to a nickel/iron asteroid, and have it produce just about anything from the materials present.

A factory cannot produce just any old thing. It can only produce what it is designed to produce without being completely retooled. A single factory capable of producing anything will probably never be possible.

[dogscoff]

Right now we are about as far from getting a man to Mars as we were from getting a man to the Moon when Kennedy committed the States to it. In other words, we could have the technological capability to get a person there and back again within a couple of decades if we decided to do it.

...

I dare claim that we have the technology to do it now.

I read a book a while agao by Arthur C Clarke. Can't remember what it was called, but it was looking at the possibility of going to Mars and terraforming it etc etc.

Anyway, in this book, there was mention of a project conceived just after the 2nd W War by one of the nazi rocket scientists. He had laid out plans and costs for a trip to Mars using 1940s or 1950s technology! He would have lifted a hideous amount of hardware into space using bigass rockets, then used more bigass rockets to send a fleet of 12 ships to Mars.

He described the costs of things by comparing them to military campaigns, and decided that a trip to Mars could have been done for the same price as a "small war".

Now this guy clearly wasn't quite screwed on tight enough, and hardly anything was known at that point about the effects of zero-G and survival in space so the mission might well have failed for those reasons, but I imagine his maths would have been sound as regards moving the necessary amount of mass the required distance.
With what we know now there's no doubt we could get ppl to Mars if someone was just willing to cough up the cash.

Maybe if we could persuade certain world leaders to refrain from starting small wars, the human race could actually do something useful.

Not sure where I'm going with all this, but it was an interesting book...

[geoschmo]

[quote]Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

A factory cannot produce just any old thing. It can only produce what it is designed to produce without being completely retooled. A single factory capable of producing anything will probably never be possible.

This could be an issue with symantics. It may be possible very soon (<100 years) to create a small automated "factory" that can produce anything we set it up to produce, but not everything without being retooled as you say. But it could produce a wide range of finished goods without being retooled. The same robots for example could be reprogrammed to build cars or pickup trucks with very minor programming changes. While switching to make 3 piece suits will be a little more difficult.

Also, given another 100 years in the process of laser modeling and you will have automated processes capable of a truely astonishing range of flexibility. Currently it's only used for rapid protoyping and what not, but it's not too far from being able to produce usable assemply line parts. Not quite a matter replicator ala Trek, but not far from it.

Also, there may be truely no limits to what can be done if we are able to come up with some practical nano-technology.

Geoschmo

[oleg]

[quote]Originally posted by geoschmo:

quote:

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Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

A factory cannot produce just any old thing. It can only produce what it is designed to produce without being completely retooled. A single factory capable of producing anything will probably never be possible.

This could be an issue with symantics. It may be possible very soon (<100 years) to create a small automated "factory" that can produce anything we set it up to produce, but not everything without being retooled as you say. But it could produce a wide range of finished goods without being retooled. The same robots for example could be reprogrammed to build cars or pickup trucks with very minor programming changes. While switching to make 3 piece suits will be a little more difficult.

Also, given another 100 years in the process of laser modeling and you will have automated processes capable of a truely astonishing range of flexibility. Currently it's only used for rapid protoyping and what not, but it's not too far from being able to produce usable assemply line parts. Not quite a matter replicator ala Trek, but not far from it.

Also, there may be truely no limits to what can be done if we are able to come up with some practical nano-technology.

Geoschmo

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If we can make a factory that will produce anything then it will certainly able to produce copies of itself. Then humanity will cease to exist. You say it will be possible very soon (<100y) ? Geee, next generation is the Last one.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by oleg:
If we can make a factory that will produce anything then it will certainly able to produce copies of itself. Then humanity will cease to exist. You say it will be possible very soon (<100y) ? Geee, next generation is the Last one.

Uh, again I think you are missing the symantic difference between being able to create an automated, single purpose factory that can produce ANYthing, and an automated multi-purpose factory that can produce EVERYthing.

A robotic factory that can build a finished product from prefabricated components can be done now, if we had the political will to do it. And the components can be created robotically as well. Given another couple decades of advancements in automation and we could build a factory that can produce a finished product from unpocessed raw materials coming in the door. Note I say, could, not that we would. Who wants to be the company known for building cars without hiring any people?

The hundred years would really only be needed to make the advancments in miniturization required to put such a factory in space out in the asteroid belt.

But again, this would be a single use facility, capable of building a specfic finished product. That wouldn't mean it would be capable of building another factory.

But even if it were, your assumption is wrong. Even if I had meant that in a hundred years we could create a factroy that could build EVERYthing, including copies of itself, why does that nessecarily result in the end of humanity? I don't see the correlation between the two.

Geoschmo

[oleg]

I guess we should wait and see. Certainly, humanity is not a pinacle of evolution.

[Mylon]

To paraphrase from Alpha Centauri:

We give more and more power to these... THINGS. Lumps of metal and paste we call nanorobots. What will happen when these homunculi awaken one day and realise that they have no further need of us?
-Sister Miriam, We Must Dissent