CEntre for SElf-Replication (CESER) Research Lab Webpage
Our work is to create self-replicating machines to enhance the human condition, especially for the exploration of space, initially focussing on industrialising the Moon at low cost. A self-replicating machine is a robotic factory that can manufacture copies of itself from local resources – it has four characteristics:
(i) its general-purpose nature imparts universal construction properties – the ability to construct anything given the appropriate local resources of materials, energy, and information.
(ii) its self-replication nature imparts exponential growth of its productive capacity – this implies that it exhibits near zero specific cost as its initial capital cost is amortised over its exponential population growth.
(iii) its closure properties impose a necessary condition of sustainability, i.e. the benefit of the productive return exceeds the cost of investment.
(iv) it can never become obsolete as it can be programmed to build any other machine including the birth of its successor.
One key driver is to address the immediacy and ubiquity of climate change. We need to construct fleets of solar power satellites on the Moon rapidly and at low cost for emplacement around Earth to provide clean energy at a global scale that can grow with our energy needs without environmental degradation. This is the raison d’etre for space exploration and the industrialisation of our solar system – it is necessary for us to survive on Earth. We believe that self-replicating machines are the technology of today, not tomorrow.
Let us show you how…
