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Martian manufacturing enables large projects;
Extending Zurbin's idea of making rocket fuel on Mars to
industrial items, before permanent settlement is started.
Robots could manufacture steel beams, glass and heavy parts for more robots.
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Not autonomous robots: Too advanced even to be considered seriously for decades, and remote-presence control at the distances to-and-from Mars not possible. Some compromise between the two, where virtual reality sequences are run, on Earth, before initiating them on Mars: from minutes-long exploratory probings, to sol-long repetitious operations within already-explored confines. Entire habitats could be constructed that way, prior to our arrival, based upon one-on-one duplications on Earth. The techniqe was developed for crewed space activities, Apollo through the ISS. Only the virtually-real Mars settings remain to be created, through the "magic of digital animation" developed for Star Wars, etc.
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They are already working on self replicating robots for Luna so maybe they will be available when we finally settle on mars :
http://www.niac.usra.edu/?link=mar04_mt … ...ows_mtg
Look for the PDF from Gregory Chirikjian; he has done a lot with his LEGO bricks (!).
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