12-05, 10:20–10:40 (Europe/Luxembourg), Banquet Room
Background
A spectrum of interstellar exploration strategies will be essential to yield high benefits to capitalise on their high costs. To minimise costs, initial explorations will be cursory and data-limited. It is envisaged that human colony missions are the ultimate goal but such missions must be preceded by thorough robotic surveys. Furthermore, human life support will be required both in transit and at the destination. We suggest that interim missions for robotic surveys and for robotic pre-colonisation require an obvious evolution from in-transit self-repair to in-situ resource utilisation at the destination.
Objective
We examine the feasibility of building pre-colonisation assets within extrasolar systems using local resources.
Methods & Results
We have previously suggested that interstellar spacecraft will require substantial onboard self-repair to ensure their survival in-transit. Such interstellar spacecraft must be supplied with a finite range of feedstocks together with a FabLab-type manufacturing capability to build components and parts on-demand. The core of such a FabLab capability is a 3D printing facility supported by milling stations and other kinematic machines. We have demonstrated that electric motors – highly complex, multi-material components – can be 3D printed implying that the FabLabs are themselves self-repairing. To perform in-situ resource utilisation at the extrasolar system destination, further capabilities are required to generate a range of feedstocks. An industrial ecology is required to support an industrialisation process necessary for the construction of assets required for human colonists. O'Neill colonies are a fits-all solution to human habitability in extrasolar systems. This will require physical and chemical processing of local asteroidal resources. We have demonstrated the extraction of aluminium metal feedstock from anorthite minerals. Aluminium is a highly versatile multifunctional material. We expect that aluminium will be the dominant material required for constructing an O'Neill colony.
Conclusions
The payload of our ISRU-functional interstellar spacecraft constitutes a self-replicating machine. The implications for SETI are profound. Given the lack of evidence of technosignatures (in this case, evidence of artificial processing of our own asteroid objects such as extensive clay deposits), the Copernican principle forces us to the conclusion that extraterrestrial intelligence with technological means do not exist.
