Section 4.3: Phases 1 to 3 For Earth

The early phases of the program have two main goals. The first is upgrading civilization on Earth. The second is preparing for and enabling space projects and construction of space locations in the later phases. In this section we address the first few phases: Starter Locations and Network, and Distributed and Industrial Locations for Earth. All parts of the program exist within and interact with the rest of civilization. Therefore we try to use what already exists when possible, and not duplicate existing systems or ones in development. We may propose improvements or alternatives to current systems if there are enough advantages to doing so.

Phase 1 in General

Phase 1 builds the first operational seed factory equipment and begins a self-expansion process that continues through the rest of the program. The equipment is located at small sites, such as individual homes, and larger sites with multiple items, such as community-built workshops. Sites which are in easy travel distance from each other, such as within a metropolitan area around a city, are grouped for design purposes into a "Location". Larger distances require more transport time and expense for people and physical items. The emphasis is then more on communications, remote collaboration and work, and transport of high value items rather than bulk goods. The designs for use within a location will therefore be somewhat different than those used across different ones.

The work in Phase 1 then involves two main areas: tasks that happen within a specific site or location, and tasks that involve coordination and collaboration between multiple sites or locations. These are addressed separately in the following headings, but we expect them to happen in parallel.

Phase 1 - Starter Locations

Starter locations use equipment and location plans designed in Phase 0 - Research and Development. This includes program-wide general R&D, and specific R&D from Phase 0B performed for Phase 1. In some cases, the Phase 1 locations will evolve from R&D locations, or inherit prototype and early production equipment made in Phase 0. R&D is done in relatively few locations, so in most cases, we expect Phase 1 locations to use newly made or purchased items as a starting point. R&D is a continuing process, so not all designs will be available at once, and initial designs may be improved or replaced over time. The development of a conceptual design for a starter location is described in more detail in Section 5.0 Personal Production of the Seed Factories wikibook. It is in a separate book partly because the early program phases have to do with projects on Earth, rather than the space systems covered in this book. The subject of seed factories is also important enough to get separate treatment, because of the widespread impact it could have. However, all the program phases are connected, so we provide summaries of the early ones here for continuity.

A Personal Production location, once expanded to design capacity, produces mainly hobby craft and home improvement products for a community of owner-operators. This is a small enough scale that the starter equipment should be affordable. By directly producing for themselves and their local community, the owners have a reason to participate. The design goal is to meet up to 25% of people's needs and wants on a part-time basis, with them not needing to give up their current homes and jobs. Even at a small scale, though, producing a variety of products with different materials, equipment, and skills will be beyond what an individual has in terms of funds, working space, and knowledge. Also, home improvement projects like adding a room often need multiple people at once to carry out. Therefore we design for a community rather than one person. Since community participation is likely to accumulate over time, the location begins with a small number of people and some conventional tools for specific categories, such as woodworking and carpentry. The conventional tools are added to over time for additional categories, and starter set machines emerging from R&D added when feasible. Some self-production and expansion is possible even with conventional tools, such as making a workbench with hand and portable tools. The seed machines raise this capacity by being computer-controlled and general-purpose. The sequence of tools and machines for a given location is not fixed, but driven by community interest and skills. The R&D phase supplies guidance on methods and designs, and whatever cannot be done internally by the community is supplied as needed by the surrounding metropolitan area or elsewhere.

Phase 1 - Network

Interest and participation will likely not be limited to a single location in easy travel distance for project members. Seed Factories book Section 6.0 The MakerNet develops the conceptual design for a network of multiple locations. These locations interact physically and electronically to help each other make things. Phase 1 network locations share the same goals as Starter Locations in terms of scale, type of outputs, and meeting up to 25% of needs and wants on a part-time basis. In addition to making products for current use, a longer-term goal is to prepare for a future of increasing robotics and automation, where conventional wage-earning jobs become scarce. To supply what people want and need in that environment, they have to either have the skills and equipment to make them themselves, buy into operations that can do so for them, or depend on transfer programs. The latter is unsustainable on a large scale and subject to political uncertainty. By tapping a wide range of locations, with multiple skills and resources, communities can better prepare for the future, and increasingly rely on themselves in the later phases.

R&D for this part of Phase 1 includes software and communications for distributing tasks across sites and locations, automatically where possible. It also includes efficient transport between sites and locations, and remote control and assistance between sites using tools like virtual reality with force feedback. That way, even if people and equipment are widely separated, they can still work together.

Phase 2A - Distributed Locations

By design, all types of seed factories can grow by self-expansion and upgrade. The natural continuation of this process is to increase the scale and intensity of operations beyond the 25% level of Phase 1, towards full self-support and trade beyond the internal community. This will likely not happen all at once, but rather by evolution of phase 1 sites as individuals decide to move past it. Phase 1 equipment can be used to make some of the parts for larger equipment. Where starter sets are optimized for flexibility, doing many tasks with few machines, higher intensity of use tends to favor more specialized machines optimized for their tasks. It also favors higher duty cycles and longer operating lives. Such heavy-duty designs are normally more expensive, but self-production and automation can minimize the increase. Lastly, higher intensity of use favors more automation, since the savings are higher the more times a task is performed. Since the designs are different in this phase, additional R&D is required, and again will not happen all at once, but is supplied incrementally. Additionally, research is needed for the optimum growth paths from Phase 1 systems, and across wider ranges of industries. Finally, not everyone will upgrade to commercial levels of activity, and not all of their equipment upgraded to those levels. So the network of locations will include a mix of Phase 1 and 2A elements.

Small business and commercial levels of operation can be reached incrementally, through internal growth, but may be started at new sites directly at that level. The larger scale may require outside funding or partnerships to get started. It may also require dedicated sites due to scale and specialized needs, and from legal constraints on types of activity. As commercial scale operations continue to grow, some can eventually evolve to the Industrial Locations of Phase 2B, while others remain at the smaller scales, all operating in parallel.

This scale of operation is not limited to production tasks, but can serve the full range of industries. This includes service-type industries that use products, but do not make them. For example, a restaurant requires a building, furniture, and kitchen equipment. All of these must first be manufactured, but the restaurant only produces satisfied diners, not finished products used in further production. So the logical progression of growth is from core machines that are used to make more machines, to machines that make end-use items, to industries that only use items to operate, but don't make any of their own.

Phase 2B - Industrial Locations for Earth

The final growth phase in moderate locations is to the industrial scale locations. Their goal is to serve larger and more widespread markets at the most efficient levels of size and specialization. At this scale, outputs are far beyond the community needs of the owner-operators. As in Phase 2A, this scale can be reached by internal growth from previous scale locations, or by starting new sites at full scale. The latter more strongly favors outside funding, because, for example, half a blast furnace is of no use. To be useful it must be complete, and thus need enough resources at one time to build it. Likewise, sufficient land for an industrial site must be acquired at once, since later additions from neighboring land may not be possible. One way to obtain such funding is to distribute ownership across many people who operate in other industries. Since outside market forces are more important than internal needs at this scale, distributed ownership diversifies risks, and allows redistributing work and equipment as needed.

Even with sufficient funding, industrial scale sites require larger work spaces with larger input and output flows. Since land parcel sizes, utility, and transport capacity is finite, this tends to limit a location to fewer product types or stages of production. Since sources of inputs and market for products is more widespread, transport is relatively more important.

Most of the output from this phase is intended for use on Earth. A portion is transport, habitation, and production equipment to reach or be used in space. The industrial locations for space-related outputs are integrated with the rest of civilization, but we reserve their discussion to the next section of the book.

Phase 3 - Other Earth Locations in General

The main goal of this phase is a better quality of life through sustainable development. The Earth's population is growing, and most people want a developed lifestyle. This requires more physical resources and energy, but moderate conditions to obtain them from are limited, and attempting to do so is already stressing the environment. A way out of this problem is to leverage highly automated production in two ways. One is to access difficult and remote locations, where additional physical resources can be found. The other is to produce large amounts of renewable energy sources, which will have less impact on the environment.

Phase 3A - Difficult Earth Locations