How Do You Build A Death Star?
The first Death Star, that very famous fictional battle station, is said to be 100 km to 160 km in diameter.
The second Death Star is said to be even larger, coming on at 200 to 400 km in diameter.
It goes without saying that is a lot of mass, a lot of construction effort and an astronomical amount of money.
. . . Or is it?
Self-Replicating Robots To The Rescue!
A self replicating machine is a machine or more probably, a set of machines, that are autonomous and are capable of reproducing themselves without human intervention using the raw materials found in their local environment.
As long as you have the plans for something: another machine, a building, a city or even a Death Star you can get self-replicating robots to build it.
Step 1. Set Them Loose in an Asteroid Field
Step 1 is to set a small number of self-replicating machines loose in a metal rich asteroid field or onto a metal rich moon.
These are your seed robots. The machines will start mining materials and do nothing in this step but mine and build more of themselves.
Step 2. Start Building The Death Star
Once the machines reach a critical number then they can use the materials that they are mining to start building the Death Star.
The machine population growth will be an exponential function. Very slow at first and rapid towards the end.
They can be building more of themselves even while they are building the Death Star.
Step 3. Cannibalization Stage
As the Death Star nears the end of its construction there will likely be billions or even trillions of robots, each one made of valuable materials.
It is during this phase that the robots start sacrificing themselves by jumping into a smelter to become raw material for the Death Star itself.
The goal is that you want to end up with zero, or almost zero, builder robots right as the Death Star is completed (almost zero because you will need seed robots to build a new Death Star when the Rebel scum blow the first one up).
Closing Words
In short, this is why the construction of the Death Star did not bankrupt the Empire.
As long as you have a seed kit of self-replicating robots and a suitable asteroid belt then any project is possible no matter how large.
Thank you for reading my post.
Post Sources
http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2005/05/researchers-build-robot-can-reproduce
Whenever you have money and robots anything is possible, good article!
Good info! I made a drawing of a Yoda and other of Darth Vader, hope you see it and let me know what do you think :D
Yoda & Darth Vader