Re: [rp-ml] Slow growth

From: Adrian Bowyer <A.Bowyer_at_bath.ac.uk>
Date: Tue Apr 29 2008 - 01:53:03 EEST

Quoting Stewart Dickson <mathart@emsh.calarts.edu>:

> Back in the old days, Marshall Burns wrote essays proposing SLS
> machines which ran on sand.
> A new way to build a pyramid.
> If it would work on Mars, it would work in Africa.

I have thought for some time that it would be fun to build a robot
that crawled very very slowly across sand, digging it up, refining it,
extracting trace elements, and using the results to make PV cells
inefficiently and badly.

These it would leave connected up in a trail behind it as it moved
forward a few meters per day. The cells would provide all the power
it needed, of course.

But what on Earth could we do with all the spare power that would be
available after it had been left to wander about in a desert for a few
years? There must be some use for it...

Best wishes

Adrian

Dr Adrian Bowyer
http://staff.bath.ac.uk/ensab
http://reprap.org
Received on Tue Apr 29 00:09:03 2008

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