The Ultimate Technic — The Promise and the Perils of Molecular Nanotechnology
These days journalists aren’t as careful about science reporting as they should be. The term “nanotechnology” is often used rather carelessly to mean any kind of microscale manufacturing, so to be more specific one must employ a clumsier phrase: “molecular nanotechnology” (MNT).
MNT is a still-hypothetical system whereby humans coax ultra-tiny molecules to assemble other ultra-tiny molecules into configurations that are useful to us macro-scale entities. (Depending on whom you consult, MNT has been going on for over a billion years in nature through Darwinian processes or thousands of years in nature through God’s intelligent design.)
So far MNT hasn’t burst on the scene as a viable alternative to conventional manufacturing techniques, but there’s no reason to think it couldn’t — and if it does, it would completely turn the world around.
Michael Anissimov at The Lifeboat Foundation postulates a “desktop nanofactory”:
The size, mass, energy requirement, and duplication time of this nanofactory design depend heavily on the properties of the fabricator. … a tabletop nanofactory (1x1x1/2 meters) might weigh 10 kg or less, produce 4 kg of diamondoid (~10.5 cm cube) in 3 hours, and require as little as fifteen hours to produce a duplicate nanofactory.
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Say that this first nanofactory is used to make a duplicate nanofactory, then both nanofactories are used to make duplicates, and so on, until you have 200 million units, ready for distribution to the majority of households in the nation. How long would this take? Under 28 duplication cycles, or approximately 18 days. In our model that would be January 19th, 2020. Assuming another week for distribution, this would put nanofactories into most homes in under a month since the technology was initially completed.
To compare, the time it took for the Internet to be adopted by 50% of American households since its invention was about 15 years. The MP3 player and cell phone have arguably taken far less time to achieve 50% adoption, more like a few years. Nanofactories could achieve 50% adoption in weeks, possibly months or years if the price is kept artificially high. . . [O]nce a nation has 200 million nanofactories and the necessary raw materials, it could theoretically fabricate 2.3 billion metric tons of product per year, mostly durable goods, a productivity rate much greater than those seen in contemporary economies.
To see how a nanofactory would work, watch this video on YouTube(4 minutes 52 seconds).
A working nanofactory would rip the lid off Pandora’s box, however, radically altering just about every social institution:
Feasibility arguments for molecular nanotechnology (MNT) are well-documented in the literature. Its not a question of if, but when. The technological and sociological impact of personal nanofactories (PNs) is certain to be extreme. If regulations permit it, you will be able to construct, right in your very home, just about any structure allowed by the laws of chemistry and available feedstock.
(Click to enlarge.)
All current manufacturing, communication, and transportation processes will be fundamentally restructured over a period of mere years or even months. The first nanofactories are likely to use carbon feedstock, meaning most of the products will be made out of diamond. Water may be used as a ballast for some diamond products.
Products built using MNT will be extremely cheap: around the cost of their raw materials. This is because human labor, the primary cost of manufacturing today, is largely subtracted from the equation.
Carbon is extremely cheap, and can be mined by the megaton from practically anywhere. Power requirements are modest. Made of diamond, a nanofactory will not require much maintenance.
Quickly, typical products made of plastic, ceramic, or metal will be redesigned to accommodate the new diamondoid medium. There will be diamond plates, diamond tables, diamond cutlery, ovens, coffee makers, microwaves, tiles, walls, chairs, televisions, cameras, printers, scanners, shelving, windows, computers, pens, notepads, pottery, showerheads, and so on. Something like 90% of all manufactured products will be replaced by diamondoid versions.
King Midas never had it so good:
The father of nanotechnology, Eric Drexler, lists a few things which would become possible with MNT:
– desktop computers with a billion processors
– inexpensive, efficient solar energy systems
– medical devices able to destroy pathogens and repair tissues
– materials 100 times stronger than steel
– superior military systems
– additional molecular manufacturing systems.
MNT has been called “magic”, and the word choice is not entirely inappropriate. We will be able to build products with greater performance and more diverse functionality than anything you or any university Ph.D.s have imagined. All shortages of energy, food, water, and shelter will be rapidly solved, as long as nanofactories are made available to developing countries. Subdermal heaters, nanoproducts designed to do little more than generate waste heat, will eliminate the problem of obesity practically overnight.
. . . . Because products made out of diamond can be extremely strong and light, 100 kg of carbon gives you a very large bang for your buck. For example, a Mercedes S-class today weighs about 2,000 kg, but with diamondoid building materials, this weight could be reduced tremendously, if desired — the primary motivation to preserve the vehicle’s current weight would be the preservation of inertia, rather than engineering limitations. An automobile made out of nanodiamond could have an absurdly low weight, on the order of a hundredth of an ounce, not including fuel.
Just be sure to tie your car down when you park it — it might blow away in a wind gust.
But given human nature, it’s reasonable to anticipate that somebody’s going to use MNT as a weapon:
The size and range of products will be limited only by whatever regulations are built into the first round of nanofactories. Hopefully these regulations will be extremely strict. You see, nanofactories will be the most dangerous technology that mankind has ever faced, thousands of times more dangerous than nuclear weapons.
Given an unrestricted nanofactory and a few million dollars’ worth of programming and engineering, here are a few products that you could manufacture in almost arbitrary quantities, given a couple months’ manufacturing time:
– Sniper rifles that weigh less than 5 kg, capable of firing a lethal projectile at Mach 10 towards any target within my line of sight.
– Extremely light and strong armor capable of stopping 10 kg explosive shells moving at 10 km/sec.
– Metal Storm systems which fire as many as 1,000,000 projectiles per minute through ballistics arrays.
– UAV swarms capable of actively neutralizing very large rockets, providing comprehensive area denial, working together to disassemble buildings, etc.
– Highly maneuverable VTOL craft able to destroy almost any number of F-22 Raptors or F-35 Lightnings.
– Gigawatt-class, solar array or nuclear-powered microwave beams capable of completely melting tanks, aircraft, destroyers, incoming missiles, etc. from hundreds of miles away.
– Isotope separation systems that enrich uranium efficiently, at great speeds, giving enough fissile material to make bombs in days rather than years.
– Gigantic lenses capable of redirecting sunlight towards arbitrary coordinates in extremely high concentrations; a solar furnace.
– Missile swarms composed of individual missiles about 1 meter long, carrying 1 kg warheads, manufactured by the millions, capable of traveling through the upper atmosphere and surviving reentry.
. . . nanofactories need to be extremely restricted in the products they can build, or there are going to be big problems. The open source, anti-digital rights management, P2P-generation needs to get this.
Information may want to be free, but if weapons designs are readily available and manufacturable in the post-MNT world, there are going to be problems of the likes we’ve never seen.
To minimize the risk of danger, the safest option is to have all product designs authenticated by a central authority. Yes, that scary phrase, “central authority”. This central authority needs to be capable of determining which designs are safe, maintaining an extremely high level of nanofactory security, and enforcing the law when people try to circumvent it. The libertarian dream of minimalist government, unfortunately, must be discarded.
When it comes to managing magic, decentralized solutions simply won’t do. There needs to be a global standard and global regulations.
. . . . Because products made out of diamond can be extremely strong and light, 100 kg of carbon gives you a very large bang for your buck. For example, a Mercedes S-class today weighs about 2,000 kg, but with diamondoid building materials, this weight could be reduced tremendously, if desired — the primary motivation to preserve the vehicle’s current weight would be the preservation of inertia, rather than engineering limitations. An automobile made out of nanodiamond could have an absurdly low weight, on the order of a hundredth of an ounce, not including fuel.
Anissimov advises extreme caution: