bootstrapping manufacturing technology,

i've come to see a comparativelly easy way of bootstrapping manufacturing that will allow manufacturing for free, and if done correctly and smartly, can free scientists from having to ask a disinterested public for money to explore the universe.

My idea is to make a network of renewable energy powered machine tools; if you arrange them to work on each other and build each other, then you can have them fix each other and build more of each other as the energy builds up; once this process becomes soffisticated enough, we can make greenhouse agriculture and rockets, and telescopes - you name it(i'm assuming only explorers of the universe are reading these forums and so have no interest in conquering the world and such other interests.)

Hummm, this sounds like a dream... or am I reading it wrong ?
This isn't possible at all.. cause all creations, developments, "repairs" asks a unique way of thinking... every repair, creation needs resources... I think this isn't something "comparativelly easy".. but a comparativelly easy mistake to think that this is easy...

to a certain extent that is possible..... it just involves amazingly complex robotics, and sigurd's right, barring AI, you'd need humans to do repairs of any problem not programmed into the machines to fix.

Yeah, we're the renewable energy powered machines. Excessivley adapatable too.

Although a massive tele-operated set of robotics may work for a lot of stuff on the moon for manufacturing just about anything. I think that would be the best bet to start up a serious moon base. The real question is just how small can you make a set of robotic machine tools that is capable of building the tools to build whatever you need. Drop off a mini factory with those capabilities and things would certainly get interesing.

Basically a von Neumann machine.

How fast could we start making a moon base using robots to get it ready for human habitation? How much would it cost?

How much could the robots do?