Show me a self replicating robot working in Arizona desert first.

I have a Nobel prize and a billion dollars of VC money right here in my back pocket. All you've got to do is demonstrate your design for a self replicating general purpose constructor robot. Actually anybody's demonstrable design will do, and I'll give you a sweet cut of the VC money.

As reductive as "just send self-replicating robots" is, it's still potentially easier than a self-sustaining human civilization like the article is talking about. Both require building the entire set of infrastructure to build industrial infrastructure and computers. The robot approach requires that every single factory and excavator is automated* - a huge feat. The human approach requires every piece of infrastructure the robot one does, plus the infrastructure to make pressurized domes, oxygen, food, heating, etc, etc, and also requires shipping large numbers of humans through the vacuum of space - also a huge feat. I don't think it's a given that either approach is easier.

* At least, automated enough that it's not bottlenecked by humans operating robot arms at a 30 minute feedback delay.

I mean, the humans are just our best existing implementation of self replicating constructors.

It is more realistic than the other options given. Anyway it could be done with couple of trillion. There are no theoretical blocks.

Aside from we don't know even in theory how to do it, which is a bit of an obstacle to overcome, I don't see how this could work without developing AGI first to operate it. That's probably at least a couple of trillion worth of R&D right there, and then again we don't actually know how to start on that even in theory.

In total the US already spends half a trillion on R&D per year. The US military spends a trillion on R&D every 15 years and the IT industry does about the same, and bear in mind most of the research these organisations are already doing would be directly relevant to a project like this. So in a way we're already doing it, and I don't see any from-scratch full-civilization self replicating technology architectures coming along on the horizon even as a theoretical exercise. Even for something like interstellar probes at least we have outline designs.

Not that I believe we are anywhere close, but processors could be made on the moon. Maybe not modern ones, but working ones. Also if space is not a problem, quite large ones too.