In news:1143451355.578298.218340@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com,
ianparker2@gmail.com <ianparker2@gmail.com> typed:

You do indeed have to make your nuts and bolts. A closed loop as I
have said before is where the net inputs are naturally occuring raw
materials.

I think that the philosophical point is this. Once you have assembled
a flatpack you can assemble anything else, you can assemble a
furnace, a jig for making nuts bolts ans screws etc.

That is true.

This is why I would argue VN machines are Science Fiction nonsense.
Technology is not a simple matter of CAD design and making things
out of thin air. It requires a certain size planet, with certain
resources, and a population of a certain size and it also required
time, because every piece of technology we have and the whole
infrastructure we have in place is a result of everything that has
happened on this planet since the very beginning of time, it is also
incredibly fragile because without resources and the people to make
the machines in the first place it would die and given a major
cataclysmic planetary disaster we could be plunged back to the stone
age within a couple of generations.

You seem to be saying, in essense, that the seed has to be as big as
the Earth - Almost. My statement that assembly of a flatpack leads to
a VN machine is still a true one. The real question is the size of the
seed you need. If the machine can do a general CAD/CAM assembly we can
produce all the parts and sub assemblies that are defined in CAD. This
includes furnaces, crushers etc.

At present we produce crews in large complex machines. This is the
most efficient labor saving way possible. It may well be that to get
a seed small you have to go back in time. For example I saw a
programme some time ago on the production of pins in Tudor times. The
head was made by twisting wire round the top. You van make a screw by
cutting out a triangular piece of material and twisting it round.
Quite clearly the first task is a flatpack assembler. Once this has
been realized the next step would be to define the minimal closure
route.

I dare say it would be possible if you designed a system suitable for a
certain environment e.g. the moon and of course one could design such a
system so it could evolve more independence as it became established. In the
beginning the robots would probably need to be made on Earth and wouldn't be
able to replicate, but over time they could build the infrastructure needed
to do that in-situ and of course over time discoveries about their
environment may enable the robot culture to evolve in ways not previously
foreseen.

I think evolution is the key, because technology tends to evolve over time.
but it also tends to rely on it's evolution in the present as well, because
in order to have hi-tech self replicating robots and sophisticated machine
at the top end, you also need mining and heavy industry which includes
technologies that are thousands of years old at bottom end of the
evolutionary chain, well someone or something still has to bang stones
together :)

OTOH Life can replicate and evolve with practically no
infrastructure, it would seem to me some form of genetic engineering
would be a more effective way to create self replicating
technologies, or beings which we could use as slaves. Well slavery
is the thing, without slaves or workers there would be no industrial
complex and no technology and it still relies on slavery in some
form or another and I dare say it always will.

NO! CAD/CAM is an understandable route. We do not yet know in enough
detail what the genome in fact does. We know that we can get there
using CAD/CAM. We know that a flatpack assembler will get us a good
part of the way. We then need to define the minimal closed system

Well yes I dare say if you wanted to use such a system to explore the
universe, you'd be better of creating some form of self sufficient self
replicating technology capable of building a network of way stations than
simply populating space with life. Saying that maybe some sort of
genetically engineered race of clones would work. But given that's
conceivable, as I have said before I do suspect if the reports of the grey
aliens have any truth in them, and I think it's possible they do. It seems
possible to me this is what they are.

OTOH though I suppose it's conceivable you could get races of beings that
have evolved over millions of years along with their own technology so as to
be better suited to space travel.

Of course in terms of invading planets like our own I wouldn't think they
would be that interested, partly because it would not be suitable to their
evolutionary needs and secondly the universe contains practically unlimited
resources. So whilst we have evolved to be territorial, selfish greedy and
possessive of limited resources, and developed whole systems of oppression
and slavery and what is basically still a feudal system. Obviously beings
that have evolved to living in space that have potential access to
practically unlimited resources would tend to rely heavily on cooperation
and networking for survival and development and the system they have evolved
is probable more akin to Communism, but unlike Communism on Earth which was
doomed from the start, by human nature itself, no such evolutionary
impediment exists and Communism is at the core of their nature.

Of course it's interesting to note Communism grew out of idea's that have
existed in religion for thousands of years, which could suggest a bit of
tampering, though since it culminated in the coldwar and the possibility of
wiping ourselves out in a nuclear holocaust, it was an experiment that seems
to have failed. But in terms of space exploration as a race of beings, I
think it will become necessary over time to develop a culture which is much
more to do with cooperation and the furtherance of our species as a whole,
than individualistic greed. So Communism is probably our evolutionary
destiny. Which I guess is one reason there appears to be a cover-up about
many of these things. Space exploration requires cooperation and political
ideologies that are at variance with Capitalism and the whole notion of
nation states. Because in order to expand into space, ideally one would need
to establish a World Government, because it would require the cooperation of
all nations and people and all the resources of our planet.
-- 
Amanda