On 5/21/2011 10:42 AM, Chuck Bowling wrote:
Interesting article. I scanned more than read but it seems like a
valid architecture for reconfigurable molecular systems.
I just wonder if it might be overkill. It seems to me like a more
versatile system would be a relatively simple 3D printer. We already
have 3D printers that can print any polymer 3D part. I would think
that the technology should be transferable to nanotech. We could
literally print anything atom by atom.
I'm afraid that the principle of printing the way we do today would be
terribly inefficient/ineffective on nanoscale 3d structures. Consider
machining or layered deposition techniques, there are angles that need
to be locked in by something maneuverable on all axes at a very small
scale, probably at times the assembler will need to trap itself within
the structures in order to complete them well. I think biological
systems hold many answers in this regard, except it would be deep
engineered toward our specific and flexible purposes. It would be neat
to just mix a simple batch of nanites with some raw resources in a tub
and out comes a massively parallel processing supercomputer in 12 hours,
but it isn't so, an analogy would be organizing a whole society toward a
monumental task like engineering and assembling a planet and viable
ecosystem from the raw parts in a short time. I know that's a weak
analogy but the complexity required to ensure efficient distribution,
quality controls, guidance, and all those minutae logistics would have
to be controlled and optimized to scale in the fastest way possible or
it would take a long time to produce rudimentary objects, or a little
time to produce complex molecular materials for other purposes. I read
somewhere that nanoassembly (atomic bonding/molecular assembly) takes a
very long time but it can be drastically reduced by having a crap load
of nanites doing the work. Very interesting, I am not an authority on
the matter, all this my take on it so far.
On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 1:30 AM, Ash <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
If you're up to reading it, this one sounds like an interesting
spec:
http://www.foresight.org/Conferences/MNT05/Papers/McKendree/index.html
