Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle publish the book “Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines.” The concept is based on the ideas first of John von Neumann (von Neumann probes, 1960s) and then of Freeman Dyson (1970s), and finally on the ideas of Freitas himself (1980s), who, for example, envisions a robot that reproduces itself on a moon of Jupiter, to build an interstellar ship (called REPRO) every five centuries. This seems like a long time, but if the goal is to explore the entire Galaxy, it’s not even that long. This goal would be achieved in just 10 million years.
