CRN=disturbed?

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FOG3
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CRN=disturbed?

Post by FOG3 »

I found this site which claims to be the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology and claims a wide "Board of Advisors" including Mr. Drexler:
++http://www.crnano.org/dangers.htm

And I'm almost certain these guys have a few screws loose, in the same way people who think if we build mecha it'll revolutionize warfare.
Although there are several possible ways to develop an MNT capability, the best way appears to be the creation of fabricators and then nanofactories that can make diamond lattice (as explained above). Diamond is very strong, and can be used to build a wide variety of useful gadgets including motors and computers. This implies that the products of a nanofactory will also be strong, and that active functionality can be extremely compact. For example, an engine powerful enough to drive a car would fill less than a cubic centimeter, and a modern supercomputer would require less than a cubic millimeter. Diamond structure would be at least ten times as strong as steel for the same weight—probably closer to 100 times as strong. Because of the simple, and massively parallel, manufacturing used by a nanofactory, the complexity of a product would not affect either the manufacturing cost or the time to build it. A new design—any new design—could be built in just a few hours. A nanofactory, like an fabricator, will be able to duplicate itself. Nanofactories will be as cheap as any other product, so any desired number of nanofactories can be built. Since nanofactories can be used for final manufacturing as well as rapid prototyping, product design will not have to concern itself with "manufacturability." As soon as a prototype is designed, it can be built. As soon as the prototype is approved, mass production can be started—and finished a few hours later.
The design of an MNT version of a product will actually be easier than today's process. Instead of designing a shape and then worrying about how to whittle down a block of material or carve out a mold, the designer simply specifies the shape—and the nanofactory will create diamond structure to fill the specified volume. Instead of worrying about fastening parts together, the designer can simply tell the CAD software that they should be attached. The surfaces to be joined will be covered by the CAD software with a simple mechanical interlocking mechanism (described in CRN's Nanofactory paper), and the convergent assembly process only needs to press them together. Because power and computer functionality will be much smaller than today's devices, the designer will have much less difficulty in making the functional parts of the design fit into the space required. And because a vast range of products can be specified by a single CAD system and manufactured by a single nanofactory design, a well-trained MNT designer will be able to design a large number of products, just as a well-trained software engineer can write a wide variety of programs.
The strength and power of products, the compactness of their functional components, and the ease and speed of design and production, combine to make MNT a very useful technology. Vast amounts of money can be saved in the product design process, in manufacturing, in distribution and warehousing. New product lines can be designed, manufactured, and marketed in a few weeks. The same efficiencies apply to military hardware as well. Each new weapons system could be developed and deployed much more quickly and cheaply. Prototypes and tests would be generated much faster and cost far less. Since a prototype design could be immediately manufactured in any desired quantity, deployment would also be much faster. New kinds of weapon systems could be contemplated. Both commercial and military/governmental organizations will have a strong incentive to fund the rapid development of MNT, even at a cost of billions of dollars.
Given the discussions there has been on this, and I couldn't find any indication it had been brought up in a search I'm interested in what other people's comments are on said organization?

Also is atomic manufacturing actually capable of allow the kind of manufacturing without defect, or extremely reduced, that would allow materials to be significantly stronger in terms more of their theoretical potential?
Duckie
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Post by Duckie »

Anyone who sees nanotechnology as revolutionizing anything but medicine and a few other things is, IMHO, a bit touched in the head anyhow. Wong's Nanotech page alone does a good job of debunking most of those ideas, let alone actual scientific papers that go very far into detail.
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Admiral Valdemar
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Post by Admiral Valdemar »

Drexler has said some things in the past he later regretted. This seems no different, only he has a bigger following now. He used to speak mostly sense, now it's dreams trying to become reality.
tharkûn
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Post by tharkûn »

Given the discussions there has been on this, and I couldn't find any indication it had been brought up in a search I'm interested in what other people's comments are on said organization?
Anything with Drexler running it is going to be kooky. He made his mind up about nano back in the '80s and hasn't changed it since. BTW we can thank him for many of the idiotic nano brainbugs that permeate science fiction and pop culture.
Also is atomic manufacturing actually capable of allow the kind of manufacturing without defect, or extremely reduced, that would allow materials to be significantly stronger in terms more of their theoretical potential?
No. Defectless manufacturing is physicly impossible. When you pack atoms into specific coordinates you limit the possible number of accessible states, and hence draw down entropy. If you build a perfect crystal eventually the T delta S term overwhelms the delta H term and the defects occur. For some materials, like diamond, one can get quite close to perfection (SWCNTs are the closest 'macroscale' thing to date), others like most metals are rather low. Too much order would simply violate free energy. We already have methods for making much reduced defect materials, normally for the purposes of intentionally defecting them in a specific manner. For the obscene majority of applications defects are simply not that big of an issue. Certain steel alloys are far superior to iron for many applications, but the cost is not worth the benifit.

As far as beyond theoretical limits, again no. Eventually we reach the problem that we are dealing with some positive charge fields and some negative charge fields; the attraction is limited by the nature of the electro-weak force.

The problem lies with Drexler being unable to fathom that one cannot fully control bonding merely by mashing two atoms togethor. Just because you bring one atom into close proximity to another few, does not mean you will end up with the ending chemistry desired. For instance if your assembler brings a hyrdoxyl group into the terminal carbon of an alkene group you cannot produce an alcohol - the carbon-oxygen-hydrogen complex will tautomerize into an aldehyde. Even with something as simple as mashing carbon atoms togethor you end up with with multiple possible bondings.
Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes.
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