New Mars Forums

From the way it looks many here on the forums are advocating either nuclear, solar, or wind power generation.  If solar is chosen it would likely take a good deal of labor to put enough panels up to generate the necessary power.  One option is to make robots do all the work.
     
     A while ago I ran across an article in Discover about robots building robots and sustaining themselves.  The energy comes from solar panels and the raw materials come from the soil.  The colony would initially start from a small population that is self-sustainable and would reproduce until a target population is hit and the colony would then be switched from reproduction mode to production mode.  The robot colony would build supplies for a human mission.  I suggest checking out the article in Discover here: Robot, Build Thyself.  Here is a link to the abstract from their article in Mathematical and Computer Modeling: Exponential Growth of Large Self-Reproducing Machine Systems.