Alternate SDI --- "Space Development Initiative"

March 1983 - [instead of Star Wars] President Ronald Reagan announces a program to develop industries in space, by building self-replicating factories on the moon, and eventually other bodies. Part of the goal is to eventually establish a human [US] presence, and thus remove the possibility of extinction by nuclear war.

Useful Ref: http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/AASM51.html#5

(BTW, I am aware there were some people in space, who got advance wind of Reagan about to do a major space speech, and really thought he was about to announce something like this)
 
March 1983 - [instead of Star Wars] President Ronald Reagan announces a program to develop industries in space, by building self-replicating factories on the moon, and eventually other bodies. Part of the goal is to eventually establish a human [US] presence, and thus remove the possibility of extinction by nuclear war.

Useful Ref: http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/AASM51.html#5

(BTW, I am aware there were some people in space, who got advance wind of Reagan about to do a major space speech, and really thought he was about to announce something like this)

I was just thinking, prompted by some recent threads, that Reagan was the only post JFK president I could really see making something like this stick.

Now, self replicating factories in 1983 might have been a hard sell. I can imagine a couple of better goals.

Maybe long-term committment to terraforming Mars?

Start on the building of infrastructure now, (orbital tug, moon base) while analysing possible fungi or microbes to release, (genetic enginering prorames?).

COuld try to draw the Sovs in even, money spent of terroforming Mars can't be spent on world domination games.
 
I was just thinking, prompted by some recent threads, that Reagan was the only post JFK president I could really see making something like this stick.

Now, self replicating factories in 1983 might have been a hard sell. I can imagine a couple of better goals.

Maybe long-term committment to terraforming Mars?

Start on the building of infrastructure now, (orbital tug, moon base) while analysing possible fungi or microbes to release, (genetic enginering prorames?).

COuld try to draw the Sovs in even, money spent of terroforming Mars can't be spent on world domination games.

It might have been a hard sell to the public, but there were serious people in the space field who done studies - including how to keep control (e..g "vitamin parts") on self-replicating factories/things to be unleashed on the moon. The idea was it would be kicked off with a relatively modest investment. You only need to shoot off a few unmanned rockets (both initially and to supply "vitamin" parts that the almost-self-replicating factories need), and eventually the moon gets dotted with factories producing not only more factories, but stuff that people can use when they eventually go there too.

Building a huge moonbase, genetic engineering new lifeforms (when DNA research was in its infancy), and terraforming a whole planet, is a whole different order of investment - orders of magnitude larger and more complex
 

yellowdingo

Banned
Incidentally, if you go to the front page of the NASA study I linked - http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/AASMIndex.html - you will see it was written in 1980/1982. And even if you're not interested in the dates, it's worth visiting that page anyway, just to see the chapter 5 headings.

freakin brilliant work...so well developed to its outcomes. I read the Release for the George W Bush Lunar Return and it is a simple media release by comparrison. THis is a serious Lunar Infrastructure project.

It would have led to some serious technological developments in AI systems (on Par with inventing the Cylon Empire by putting the first self replicating factory on the moon)
 
It might have been a hard sell to the public, but there were serious people in the space field who done studies - including how to keep control (e..g "vitamin parts") on self-replicating factories/things to be unleashed on the moon. The idea was it would be kicked off with a relatively modest investment. You only need to shoot off a few unmanned rockets (both initially and to supply "vitamin" parts that the almost-self-replicating factories need), and eventually the moon gets dotted with factories producing not only more factories, but stuff that people can use when they eventually go there too.

Building a huge moonbase, genetic engineering new lifeforms (when DNA research was in its infancy), and terraforming a whole planet, is a whole different order of investment - orders of magnitude larger and more complex

THing is in 1983 we could do neither, hell we can do either now, but we can start the process on Terraforming Mars, which would require the begining of orbital industry.
 
I don't think it would be mischaracterizing the 1983 status (read the report) to say that the Self-replicating system (SRS) was in principle achievable to a high degree - but humans would still need to supply some stuff (i.e. haven't achieved "closure") - like information/control and certain microelectronics and other "vitamin" parts. I don't really think that has changed yet.

Terraforming, we also sort of think is achievable in principle too - and we probably know more about the principles now than 25 years ago.

The key difference is cost when you go from a standing start - think about the number of launches for example.

Sending a few unmanned rockets to the moon to build the 1 factory (which then will build another and another and so on, save for a few rockets supplying specialist parts) has got to be orders of magnitude easier than sending hundreds (?) of rockets to Mars to build a mirror to reflect more sunlight onto the planet, etc.

There's also the question of distance. You can launch to the moon any time pretty much, but you only have good launch windows to Mars at certain times of year. Stuff takes a lot longer to ship to Mars than the Moon. Radio signals (to remote control stuff from Earth) takes longer to get to Mars - the Moon is (almost) real-time in comparison. If you need to send a crew to the Moon to service or check on the equipment, you put them in a tin can with enough food and air for a few days, for Mars it's a whole different problem.

Terraforming Mars may come one day, but it isn't going to happen until there's already space infrastructure and space-based industries.
 
Wonderful stuff. And still promising. Now, AFAIK, 1980. study said that it was likely possible, and maybe achievable with 20-25 years of directed and continued research. And since you would project system around resources it has to work with, it would call for detailed mineralogical studies of the Moon. Clementine probes flying before the end of '80es, with Lunar Prospectors following. Development of heavy lift vehicles in the pipeline.

Thing is, it is a long term project, but since its main directions are AI and industrial automation just development would have much more and much more profitable fruits than other "pure space" research. Most of work is done on Earth, in compsci and robotics research centers, most with immediate applications in industry.

And to emphasize something. We are not talking about any nanotechnology related universal constructor-replicator, those, even if they are possible, weren't related in least to NASA 1980. paper.

So lets say that what is announced is a long term project for economic and industrial development of Earth orbit and Moon, with self rep facility as a long term goal. With main goal being robotics and AI it is very likely Japan would either want to cooperate or start their own program to maintain their leadership in those areas.

For the continuation of '80es and trough '90es we see much more sophisticated moon probes, maybe even new sample retrieval missions, though in coordination with the SRLF project better goal would be to create independent or teleoperated mobile geological laboratories and place them on the Moon to start gathering data.

Assuming rest of the world keeps on OTL events, and that research is at least somewhat fruitful. By 2000. final hardware is being finalized for launch, by either Shuttle C or a new heavy lift vehicle. And doubts of usefulness of project would come to end with 2001. and oil price raise. When a selfrep facility paving moon with solar collectors becomes a very nice thing to have.

So first launches in 2000-2005. timeframe, with entire initial system mass on Moon by 2010. 10 years later first MW start being microwaved or lasered to retransmission facilities in GEO, that were also built on the Moon and launched on electromagnetic launchers (no fuel use is nice, as you will always be short of volatiles on the Moon). Plans to launch second generation self rep systems to permissible asteroids.

2050. deconstruction of Mercury for computronium for Matroshka Brain begins. :p

Unlike OTL, where it wont likely happen before 2070. (Yes I believe in Big S (being somewhat plausible(and not necessarily the best thing for humanity)))
 
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