A well-equipped machine shop, paired with a smelter, and some stacks of blueprints inscribed in iron plates, could probably be used to produce all it’s component parts from naturally-occurring materials. Of course, it would be dependent on human crafters and technicians… but there are species of insect which can only reproduce parasitically, so that’s not an automatic disqualification.
we can’t build a self-replicating system the size of a butterfly
I must have missed when we built any self-replicating systems at all. . .
A well-equipped machine shop, paired with a smelter, and some stacks of blueprints inscribed in iron plates, could probably be used to produce all it’s component parts from naturally-occurring materials. Of course, it would be dependent on human crafters and technicians… but there are species of insect which can only reproduce parasitically, so that’s not an automatic disqualification.