Space Colonisation

I was reading an article from an issue of Focus magazine about the colonisation of other planets and the moon. It had mentioned a few parts about robots being used but only for minor tasks. It then got me thinking: What if robots could colonise and work on the planets alone? Or even better, what if the robots could establish themselves and then prepare for human settlers?
   Now I asked myself "how would this be done?" The next few blog posts will explain this process.
  

Part 1: The advance party arrives

The process could start potentially with nothing more than a spacecraft, one robot, a bunch of parts and interchangeable pieces (I will explain later) to build more robots and some solar panels. So you may be asking yourselves "how could one robot build an entire space colony?" Well that is the beauty of this idea as you only need to start with one.

   The robot would basically be just a fairly smart robot with an arm and gripper similar to the one below:

Concept drawing of space colonists

Once the craft has landed on the planet, (let's use mars as it is the planet most similar to earth in the solar system) the robot can start to go about its tasks. The first task is to assemble its robot buddies. Once it has assembled the first one they both can assemble two other robots and so on. "Why not just have them all assembled?" you may be asking. The simple reason is the power supply.To have all the robots running during the serveral month journey to Mars would be inefficient because the robots wouldn't actually be doing much. Of course you may be thinking have them all off and have one "switch on" when the craft lands. Well there is always the danger of the autopilot system being used failing so a robot may have to take over.

  

Once all of the robots have been assembled (let's say 10 as it is nice round figure) they can all go about their tasks. The idea with the interchangeable is that the robots can be assembled with specific tasks such as drilling, sawing and cutting and in the case of the "standard" robot, assembling. Now any robots with the drills attached can starting drilling for resources such as metals and water. Water is not essential at this stage as the robots have to fully establish on the planet before preparing for humans. The water can be "cracked" by electrolysis to produce hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel. The other robots can now set up the solar panels to produce power for this tiny space colony.

Part 2 will involve the colonisation of the rest of the planet.