Axil Axil <janap...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In the not so distant future, water will enters a robotic custom product > production plant as feedstock via a pipe and a purpose build custom product > will roll off the production line of the local plant as a finalized > manufactured article without ever needing or seeing a human. > I do not think that sort of industrial scale transmutation will happen in the "not so distant future." More like hundreds or thousands of years from now. Two comments: 1. Arthur C. Clarke predicted this in "Profiles of the Future." 2. If water is the feedstock, I hope they keep track of the approximate mass, and they convert garbage back into water. The mass of manufactured goods, food an other materials consumed by people is large enough that a few thousand years of consuming water might lower the sea level measurably. It might make more sense to convert garbage and trash into what we need, rather than water. Clarke suggested that the machines might need to store ash (unused output material) or extra feedstock in some convenient, non-toxic, dense material. He recommended gold. It would be ironic if factories had large piles of slag in the form of gold. - Jed
