News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:A new Moon race has begun by prewett on Thursday May 07, 2020 @05:08PM (#23108353)
If you were going to make a 100% robotic factory/refinery/etc. you would design it for robots. The problem with the Roomba is that houses are designed for people, not robots. A robotic factory could avoid a lot of problems by not needing to design for people.

While I disagree with your benchmark, I don't think we're going to be putting robotic factories in space in 3-4 years. Have we even built a 100% robotic factory on earth yet? Plus, I don't think that anyone has built an autonomous robot for zero-g yet (I'm not counting satellites and Canada-arm).

Re:A new Moon race has begun by avmich on Thursday May 07, 2020 @08:27PM (#23109993)
> Plus, I don't think that anyone has built an autonomous robot for zero-g yet (I'm not counting satellites and Canada-arm).

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/17/15981250/japan-space-came...

"Japan’s space agency has for the first time released photos and videos taken on the International Space Station by its resident robot drone..."

Re:A new Moon race has begun by derekp7 on Thursday May 07, 2020 @09:11PM (#23110334)
But that factory won't do any good unless it gets input, and can put its output somewhere. The input would supposedly be from the local regolith which has a lot of the same problems that the example roomba would face.

Now a factory on Mars that takes in sunlight and atmosphere, and fills a tank with rocket fuel, could be possible. But in that case I would call it a specialized machine, not a factory or a robot.