How long does that intermediate step take? If the machine shop-shop outputs one shop per week, but every 4th (or whatever) output is a mining-robot-shop or a forestry-robot-shop or something else instead, is that sufficient to solve your inputs problem while only slowing down the doubling time by a modest amount?
My best guess is it takes 5ish years to replicate everything in a machine shop minus the things which can’t realistically be made in a machine shop (e.g. electronics, high speed steel stuff, diamond powder, maybe bearings). Much of that time would be spent on repetitive tasks like making screws. Mining and forestry robots would slow down the process more, likely quite a bit more, not so much because they’re difficult
as because they have a lot of parts.
How long does that intermediate step take? If the machine shop-shop outputs one shop per week, but every 4th (or whatever) output is a mining-robot-shop or a forestry-robot-shop or something else instead, is that sufficient to solve your inputs problem while only slowing down the doubling time by a modest amount?
My best guess is it takes 5ish years to replicate everything in a machine shop minus the things which can’t realistically be made in a machine shop (e.g. electronics, high speed steel stuff, diamond powder, maybe bearings). Much of that time would be spent on repetitive tasks like making screws. Mining and forestry robots would slow down the process more, likely quite a bit more, not so much because they’re difficult as because they have a lot of parts.