development of artificial intelligence should not be considered until it has been determined whether the manufacturing facility can be developed at acceptable cost; as just described, in the making of this determination, the time and cost to develop the artificial intelligence may already be required. Conclusion If the only basis for determining actions is the plan for which the cost given in the present paper is minimum, then the next action is to determine whether it is possible to create a preliminary design of a space manufacturing facility with pure self-reproduction which uses raw material only from an asteroid. To make costs acceptably low, between this determination and the determination of the detailed design, the cost and time to development of artificial intelligence may be required; if not required then, this cost and time information should be obtained at the time of the completion of the detailed design, and, if acceptable, the artificial intelligence should be developed before any more space manufacturing facility development is performed. If the cost of space manufacturing facility development is only that included in the cost estimate found in this paper, and it is assumed that the total cost of the plan, including that of the development of the artificial intelligence is $11 x 109 then the cost allowed for the development of the artificial intelligence would be $1 IxlO9 - $10.25xl09 = $7.5 x 108 . All other plans which use self-reproduction use pure self reproduction, except the extended S.S.I. plan. Since it may be necessary to develop artificial intelligence to reduce the cost to develop self-reproducing machinery to an acceptably low level, but neither cost nor time to develop artificial intelligence are known, the extended S.S.I. plan has the advantage that the probability that the necessity to develop artificial intelligence is lower, since the self reproducing manufacturing facilities need not be as advanced, which itself is an advantage in reducing the cost to develop self-reproducing machinery, as well as because it may be possible to find a preliminary design of the partially self-reproducing manufacturing facilities even though no preliminary design of pure self-reproducing machinery can be found. However, irrespective of the advantages of the increased probability of development of the required equipment, the total cost of the plan is higher than any other plan which uses self-reproducing machinery in the present paper. Once a preliminary design is found for the manufacturing facilities of any of the plans which has an acceptably low cost, a research program to determine costs more precisely can be followed. In this program, in each of 3 stages, each of which lasts 3 months, cost estimates are refined by a factor of 10. At the end of each stage, determination of the relative desirability of the plans for which designs exist against each other is made, and the most desirable studied further. Also at the end of each stage, the desirability of carrying out any of the plans at all when compared to other possibilities is evaluated, including in the consideration the research costs to refine the cost estimates of the plans further, and the decision made whether to proceed with any further research. If, as stated above, the costs given in this paper are accurate to 50% with the exception of the costs of development of the manufacturing facilities, at the completion of the third stage, costs would be determined within 0.05% . At the
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