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<blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 9640687" data-attributes="member: 710">AI needs hardware resources that needs electricity and produces a lot of heat (and cooling is a concern in vacuum), and the components also degrade from radiation. And innately, computers have absolutely no self-repair capabilities. To some extent, you can turn off defective processors or memory, but repairing is its own infrastructure that currently includes humans. If you switch to robots (AI powered or really simple algorithms, it's still computers at the end), you of course also have to think about how to maintain those robots. You will need a lot of spare parts and/or a long chain of machinery that build all the parts you need, including the parts to repair that machinery. You really don't want your nuclear reactor or fusion reactor to break down.It always boils down that you need some sort of self-sustaining eco-system. Not necessarily self-sustained forever, but for the duration of the travel. If you also want some form of colonization, you also need something to make the place you reach hospitable to whatever &quot;colonizes&quot; it (be it AI and robots, human colonists from a generation ship or whatever.). Even if we detect life on such a planet, there is still the question if we could eat anything we find there, and if the atmosphere has the right composition. (And for the AI and robots, the existence of life isn't a great help, unless it includes friendly aliens that would help repairing and maintaing them.)Which is part of the machinery that I figure you need to bring aboard - fuel and engines, maneuvering thrusters.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mustrum_Ridcully, post: 9640687, member: 710"] AI needs hardware resources that needs electricity and produces a lot of heat (and cooling is a concern in vacuum), and the components also degrade from radiation. And innately, computers have absolutely no self-repair capabilities. To some extent, you can turn off defective processors or memory, but repairing is its own infrastructure that currently includes humans. If you switch to robots (AI powered or really simple algorithms, it's still computers at the end), you of course also have to think about how to maintain those robots. You will need a lot of spare parts and/or a long chain of machinery that build all the parts you need, including the parts to repair that machinery. You really don't want your nuclear reactor or fusion reactor to break down. It always boils down that you need some sort of self-sustaining eco-system. Not necessarily self-sustained forever, but for the duration of the travel. If you also want some form of colonization, you also need something to make the place you reach hospitable to whatever "colonizes" it (be it AI and robots, human colonists from a generation ship or whatever.). Even if we detect life on such a planet, there is still the question if we could eat anything we find there, and if the atmosphere has the right composition. (And for the AI and robots, the existence of life isn't a great help, unless it includes friendly aliens that would help repairing and maintaing them.) Which is part of the machinery that I figure you need to bring aboard - fuel and engines, maneuvering thrusters. [/QUOTE]

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