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NASA Space Science

NASA Supporting Nanotech Development 136

Posted by CmdrTaco from the blinded-me-with-science dept.
It doesn't come easy writes "In laboratories around the country, NASA is supporting the burgeoning science of nanotechnology. The basic idea is to learn to deal with matter at the atomic scale -- to be able to control individual atoms and molecules well enough to design molecule-size machines, advanced electronics and "smart" materials."
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NASA Supporting Nanotech Development More

NASA Supporting Nanotech Development

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  • Should be more like this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @07:08AM (#13315481) Homepage Journal

    NASA excells when they are funding or developing something totally new. They are not so good at mundane operational issues.

    For example NASA let SRB O-ring problems creep up on them over many years. Same thing with TPS damage by foam. They don't deal with things which change slowly over time. They work on feel, rather than analysis.

    But as developers of totally amazing stuff (Mercury, gemini, Apollo, Shuttle) they do very well.

    My advice: if anything comes of this nanotech effort, NASA should sell the technology to private industry as fast as possible. Get out of the operational side and start developing the next big thing.

    Back to the shuttle. Once the system was developed it could have continued to be funded and regulated by one or more Government departments, I just don't think NASA is the department to do the job.

    • Yeah, well shit happens. I think NASA is the perfect system to operate the Shuttle, instead of handing it over to some private industry dingbats. Maybe NASA should operate the nuke plants too, instead of handing them over to dumbass operators who fall asleep at the control terminals at 3 mile island, for they were hired into that position because they were profitable - i.e. cheap. Yeah, let's privatize everything, even the police, military and yo momma too.

      • I just don't get this (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Every time NASA comes up lately I see a bunch of libertarian extremists ranting about how public space programs are so evil and we need to destroy them so private space programs can flourish, and a bunch of NASA fanboys ranting about how the private space programs suck so much and they need to get out of the way so NASA can work.

        WTF?

        Why can't we have a great public space exploration program AND great private space development? We may not have either right now, but I don't see any reason we can't have both.
        • Until recently (1998 i believe) private space launches were illegal. Of course, you could send your private communications satellite after sufficient testing and regulatory rigamarole, but it would be on NASA candle.
          • Of course, you could send your private communications satellite after sufficient testing and regulatory rigamarole, but it would be on NASA candle.

            Not really true.

            One could always go to the French or the Russians to do spacelaunch. And NASA isn't really involved much at all in the commercial launch business the Air Force does out of Vandenberg.

            And that was the 1990's.

            Today, there are more options. Sealaunch, Japan is getting into the commercial launch business, and soon, players like SpaceX will be enteri
        • Why can't we have a great public space exploration program AND great private space development?

          because such an arrangement does not support extremist ideology at either end of the political spectrum, and would allow those of us in the middle to live and prosper free of conflict and power games on which the extremists thrive.

          That's why.
          • I have no problem with private space exploration - go ahead, fly if you want, nobody's stopping you, and if the FAA/FCC/FDA is stopping you, I'll be yelling foul on your side.

            But I don't like the rule that everything has to be rushed to commercialization as fast as possible. Some things take a while to become commercial and profitable, and require quite a long period of nurturing first, such as raising kids, or space mining/space energy production/space self-sustaining ecosystems as life insurance against a
        • Because the public program will be able to use the public dollar to run the private endeavors into the ground, and then use the fact that they're the only ones with operating experience to justify their getting every job? Having "competition" where one of the parties is owned by the government is the worst of both worlds.

    • NASA should be an IP clearing house (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      My advice: if anything comes of this nanotech effort, NASA should sell the technology to private industry as fast as possible. Get out of the operational side and start developing the next big thing.

      You hit the nail on the head and frankly I think NASA should be doing EVERYTHING this way. NASA should just open up everything they do outright for licensing by private parties, from the rocket boosters to the robot technology on up.

      If you look at the state of private space development, NASA is basically already

    • if anything comes of this nanotech effort, NASA should sell the technology to private industry as fast as possible.

      Sell? The public funds NASA. NASA's research should go back to who paid for it instead of locking it up within one company. I thought the USA was supposed to be a capitalist society? Let anybody use this new technology and there will be competition instead of one company doing everything.

      • It should be sold, as in licensed, and not merely given away as that generates licensing revenue for the government which if the laws covering it were written right, would allow a lessening of general tax revenue being sent to NASA proportionate to licensing income to a certain point above which NASA reaps the excess to expand their operations.

        It should of course be in the domain of the executive and legislative branches as per usual as to international licensing/sharing of data gleaned from NASA work.

        N
        • Discoveries uncovered by public funding should be GPL - (or similar - like public domain). If part of the research was government funded, and part was private, then either the specific ideas that were discovered by government should be public, or a pro-rata scheme should be written into the license of the patent.

          The goal of government funding for R&D should never be to generate revenue directly. The goal should be to give private research a leg-up, which aids the whole economy, because R&D transla
          • I would not be opposed to US-funded research being public, but only to US companies who hired US workers and paid US taxes

            I'm sorry but this is frankly impossible. To be fair to the US public you would have to give the information equally to every US citizen, and trust them not to leak the information to evil foreigners like me.

            Better for NASA to take the profit up front. Sell the technology to US owned businesses and invest the proceeds in new research.

      • Any research that is funded by tax revenue should be patented and licensed free of charge to all taxpayers. This is elementary, but unfortunately idealistic and impossible to realize in the face of overpowering greed and corruption.
    • For example NASA let SRB O-ring problems creep up on them over many years. Same thing with TPS damage by foam. ..obviously not paying enough attention to their TPS reports... (sorry, couldn't resist)
    • The existance of NASA (and NACA) is based on the idea that they are to examine high risk concepts and develop them to the point that they can be transfered to industry. Working for a few years now on the aeronautics side of things, I've seen it done several times. This is at the center of the Boeing/Airbus dispute. We accuse them of getting direct subsidies from the European governments to fund their aircraft development, while they accuse Boeing of getting subsidies in terms of research done by NASA.

      Due
      • As far as foam-strikes go, they certainly were aware of the foam strikes, but they had no idea how much damage potential there was, until AFTER the Challenger disaster, they tested shooting chunks of foam out of an air cannon at a mock-up of the shuttle wing, and were shocked at the damage. They didn't realize how much damage the foam could cause at 500 mph. They didn't realize how much the foam would slow down in such a short distance. The calculations based on the mass of smaller foam chunks didn't sup
    • For example NASA let SRB O-ring problems creep up on them over many years. Same thing with TPS damage by foam. They don't deal with things which change slowly over time. They work on feel, rather than analysis.

      You make it sound like challenger and columbia were slow mistakes. There were not. The shuttles have a known set of issues. All mechanical things do. We are asking the most complex piece of equipment ever built to work in the harshest of environments. All of the issues with each shuttle were known wa

      • Because I am who I am, I really like what you're saying.

        But tell me, do you have any evidence of your accusation? I would like to propagate this argument, because it applies to nearly every technological endeavor. I know that at the software startup I began work at 15 years ago, the company had bright promise. Then they hired a "professional businessman" to run the company. He succeeded in running the company, technically, into the ground - but on the other hand, he succeeded in positioining the company
        • But tell me, do you have any evidence of your accusation?

          First off, I have worked with NASA, so I am biased.

          Read the Columbia report. If you read it, they point their fingers in a number of direction, but in the end, they point to the very top management as being the crux of the problem. Basically, it nicely says that they did not listen to those below them. It was the same issue with with challenger. The people up top were threatening the engineers with their jobs if they did not go along with the go dec

  • Obviously thinking along the lines of... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "So these atom things... just stuff spinning around other stuff right? Okayee, we're in business!"
  • I'm sure we'll see a whole lot of people suffering from Separation anxiety. **boom boom**

  • What about nano-economics? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pieterh ( 196118 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @07:17AM (#13315500) Homepage
    If there's one lesson that the shuttle sage should have taught NASA - even without the many other demonstrations from around the world such as Japan's 5th Generation Computing, the EU's Eureka programme, etc. - is that large-budget top-down science does not produce value for money.

    The best motor for innovation is competition, and the main problem with NASA-style science is that it eliminates scientific and engineering competition and replaces it with burocratic competition. Real progress is made by small teams that see risk as opportunity, while NASA-style science is done by large teams that see risk as something to be avoided at all costs.

    Let's see research conducted around a much more open competition for the available money, provided more in the form of prizes and awards and less as research grants.

    Let's stop paying people on their skills in writing grant applications and start rewarding people for their ability to think in creative and useful ways.

    • Re:What about nano-economics? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @07:30AM (#13315530)
      Real progress is made by small teams that see risk as opportunity, while NASA-style science is done by large teams that see risk as something to be avoided at all costs.

      First of all, up to recently, space exploration was an activity that can't possibly be boosted by competition. Totally New Things[tm] usually come from government-funded research labs, such as the ARPANET, the moon landing program, etc... That's because such ground-breaking experiments can only be put together at a complete loss. Once the road is open, let competition pave it.

      Secondly, it's true NASA today is stifled by a risk-avoiding attitude, but that's only because the administration (and the public) doesn't really have a strong desire to go to space, therefore any small problem leads to a reduction in NASA budget. The great things NASA did in the past were done because the administration just had to achieve what Kennedy promised, otherwise they'd have lost the race to the moon. In that light, loss of astronauts and giant rockets exploding right and left weren't very big concerns compared to losing face with the USSR. Nowadays, there is no USSR to compete against.
      • Hopefully China will have some manned missions soon, to give the U.S. Space program a kick in the pants.
      • It's nice to see such faith in the power of top-down science. I don't think the moon landing was a road to anything at all except several decades of very expensive militrary / space spending. Arpanet is the classic example of successful government-driven research but it stands out exactly because such successes are rare. Arpanet succeeded for many reasons - timing, highly skilled individuals, essence of the problem. I do not think that government funding was essential but that is speculation.

        Slashdot re
        • I'm quite amazed that 40 years after we walked on the moon, we are ending the programme, because of falling chunks of foam.


          You don't think 24 years is a good run for a single spacecraft design? Hell, most car designs don't last half that long, and they are much simpler. It's time to move on to something better.

          • Yes, 24 years is a great run for a single design. But what I said, was: we are ending this programme with no successor or evolution. That means that the design might as well have lasted 1 month: the value of any technological feat is not the one-off but the incremental. NASA has managed great feats but not the only one that counts: a process for incremental improvements over the long term.

            To give a simile: imagine a company that made one very good, very fast computer. Wonderful. But if they can't make
          • Hell, most car designs don't last half that long, and they are much simpler.

            Most car designs don't last half that long because they are much simpler. Aircraft designs typically last much longer than car designs; this is simple economics.

            Oh, and isn't it ironic that many of the people who say it's time to move on from the Shuttle, advocate a return of the Saturn V?
      • SIR, you have explained the situation most excellently!

        And to all those who will take exception to what you have explained so lucidly - just do a little reading in the history of science and technology - the vast majority of the tech stuff (like...digital electronics, microelectronics, computer science, advanced telecommunications, biomedical engineering, materials science, etc., etc., etc.) derived from the NASA/Apollo program research. [Everything almost, but Velcro, which the lowbrows have wrongfully a

    • Re:What about nano-economics? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @07:35AM (#13315541) Homepage Journal
      Let's stop paying people on their skills in writing grant applications and start rewarding people for their ability to think in creative and useful ways.

      I think science is totally broken because of the secretive, competitive approach which scientists take to towards their work.

      Science is not really a commercial activity, people who spend 10 years working on something and lose in the last month to another team can have their entire career at risk over small issues of secrecy and professional ethics.

      An open source approach in science would accomplish two things:

      1. You could easily prove who had what idea first
      2. Scientists could immediately build on the work of others without being accused of plagurism

      Right now, working in science is too much of a risk for people in some fields; particularly biotech. Why devote your career to something when you are judged by a first past the post system?

      • Re:What about nano-economics? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @08:21AM (#13315643)
        Real science is what you've described.

        Commercialized science is not science, just refining.
      • Sorry, but have you actually worked as a researcher somewhere?

        Science is pretty much open source, in most fields. The Nanotech people might be a little more secretive because the commercial application is so close, and of course the commercial research and development groups don't publish a lot of papers, but in general I wonder how you've come to think that.

        I don't know of anyone who was been working on something for 10 years secretly. I don't know anyone who would have a name in the field, attend conferen
      • Speaking as someone who has worked in research, in a 'secretive' nanotechnology company none the less, I completely disagree. First, these companies are not truly secretive. They want their name out in the forefront. Rule #1 to getting venture capitalist funding is to make a name for yourself. They tend to publish discoveries as they make them, with just enough lag time to patent them such that if someone wants to use it, they need to pay. Start ups are money starved and so don't think twice about lice

        • The prime example I had in mind when I wrote the post you are replying to was the recent contraversy on MPML about an object called K40506A.

          If you want to take a look this [yahoo.com] would be a good place to start.

          Basically astronomers in this context work with the assumption that their infromation will be private until they choose to release it. But if somebody else finds the same object first and makes an announcement then they have priority and are considered the discoverer.

          If these people had been more open wit

          • You are missing two very important parts about that story.

            1) That is not a symptom of commercial science. All science, regardless if it is academic in nature or commercial, hold back information until it can be confirmed. The entire peer review system is based upon the idea that you hold back information until you can be reasonably sure that it is true.

            2) This is a good thing and helps improve science.

            Last year I worked on a project with a commercial nanotechnology company. We were working on something

    • Re:What about nano-economics? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I have to disagree. The current trend towards "commercialisation" of Grant Distribution will bite us all on the arse in 20 years.

      Hard Science research doesn't pay off commercially for years. Look at history if you don't believe me.

      But now it's increasingly difficult to get a grant unless you can demonstrate that there's a good chance of commercialisation in the "near" future. As a result we have lots of "trivial" research, and very little new work being done. Even Universities, which used to be bastions
      • Furthermore, many corporations are terrified of technology which fundamentally transforms the market. Granted, this is not science per se, but it still represents a way in which corporations have a vested interest in iterative, trivial progress. They expect to extract all of the money they can from a particular technology before cooking up the next one: stable, predictable, and stagnant. Yeah, it's old hat, but look at the internet revolution: Xerox dropped the ball because they had a vested interest in sta

  • I wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ichigo Kurosaki ( 886802 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @07:19AM (#13315509)
    I wonder if we will ever get to the point of nanotechnology described in Neal Stephenson's book The Diamond Age, where we have complete control of atoms and can buld infinetly strong structures infinetly small.

    If we do the problem of sending vehicles to X will be much easier to due the fact that there would not be hardly as much inertia to overcome.

    Its pretty obvious why NASA has there hands in nanotechnology development.
    • I wonder if we'll ever reach the stage of Gandalf in Lord of the Rings where we can cast magic spells 'n' stuff. That way we could just magic ourselves to other planets.
    • There is a limit to how small you want a space probe to be. Basically, you need a rocket that will get the final-stage booster going as fast as a it needs to be.

      In other words, getting a few hundred kg of mass into orbit (or on a Mars trajectory) is only slightly more difficult than getting nothing to orbit.
      • Ya know, you're the first person I've heard actually state that. I agree with you, but I have never actually seen the math to back it up. SpaceX's Falcon I can deliver 580kg to the space station, for $5.9 million. What you're claiming is that if we only want to deliver 2kg to the space station we're still going to have to pay $5.9 million if no-one else wants to go with us..
        • Well, maybe not exactly $5.9 million. Maybe it would be $5.89 million, or something. The actual fuel costs of a launch are pretty insignificant, and they would be the only real change between a 2kg launch and a 580 kg launch.

    • Just to comment on one point, it's pretty much established - Drexler pointed it out in his seminal nanotech work, "Engines of Creation" - that it will NOT be possible to produce "infinitely strong structures infinitely small."

      It will be possible to produce materials that are stronger than at present, but there is a physical limit. (IANAP - I Am Not A Physicist - or ME - Materials Engineer)

      Drexler's first work covers the possibilities of nanotech very well, although do note that he warns that he describes so
    • There's certainly a lot of promise for such technology.

      For instance, Stephenson's aerostats could "fly" because they had a structure strong enough to maintain an inner vacuum, but light enough to be lighter than the air they displaced. Such technology, if applied on a large scale, could solve many problems we currently have with space travel. A vehicle so constructed could lift spacecraft out of the earth's atmosphere, allowing them to accellerate to orbital speeds using far less propellant. Conversely,

  • Nanotech - otherwise known as Chemistry (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PDoc ( 841773 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @07:22AM (#13315514) Homepage
    Fir gawd sake! Dealing with matter on an atomic level has been around since Newton's time - and in it's modern incarnation since the late 19th century. It's called chemistry. Using macroscopic tools to inact precise molecular interactions and rearrangements. You know it's gone way to far when simple crown-ether derivatives get renamed "molecular cages" or worse "nano capsules" in an attempt to get funding. Want some funding for your research proposal? Drop in "nano", "bio" and "green" a few times, loose any detail of what you're acutally trying to do, and no problem...

    • Re:Nanotech - otherwise known as Chemistry (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No, Nanoscience/Nanotechnology is the intersection of Physics, Chemistry, and/or Biology. It is when two or three of these fields is combined synergistically.

      Yes, the study of small things has been around for hundreds of years. But you will find that within the last 100 years chemistry and physics have grown in their tangents. Nanoscience is putting them back together along with biology.
      • True, that's the pure premise of nanotech, but it doesn't seem to work like that. I'm an organic chemist, so most of this materials stuff isn't in my domain, but I do read and understand most of the journals. And the flaw is that because governments and the appropriate bodies love nanotech as a buzz word, far too many researchers use the term overliberally, and corrupt it's true meaning.
        Nasa has every right, and should be at the forefront of research into new materials et c. But this is materials chemistry/
        • Yeah, happens a lot, in all kinds of fields.

          Occasionally when the media (or people who are in high places) use words incorrectly because it sounds cooler, don't expect them to go back to their original meaning. Heck, don't even expect to be able to use them for their original meaning without being looked at\talked about as if you're stupid (ironically, by the ignorant majority).
      • I can't believe you used the word "synergistically."
      • No, because Physics, Chemistry, and Biology are all the same thing, more or less. Nanotech is the intersection of these things and ENGINEERING. The explicit difference is that if a human designer puts the atoms/molecules where he or she wants them, for specific, pre-defined functions, they are doing more than just chemistry. Sure, some chemistry, biology, Physics, etc, do this already, but it is misinformed to simply say that nanotech is the intersection of these fields. Without the engineers, it's all

    • Re:Nanotech - otherwise known as Chemistry (Score:4, Insightful)

      by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Sunday August 14, 2005 @09:22AM (#13315772) Homepage Journal
      An idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about gets modded up by other idiots who don't know he's an idiot. Gotta love Slashdot. It'd be funny if it didn't remind us so much of the US congress.

    • The difference between classical chemistry and nanotechnology is that the properties no longer depend solely on the types of bonds or the valenes of the atoms. It is not simply a matter of introducing catalysts so the reaction rate increases. Nanotech also deals with the study of size dependent properties of known materials. Nanotech will deal with the formation and study of new materials whose sizes and structure would have been difficult to study prior to the characterising technology of the 1980's. I
    • Ahh, Classic ignorance.

      Oh so many times I've heard this arguement. I'm a researcher in Surface Science and I look at atoms and molecules all the time. Chemical synthesis is very amazing, I give you that. Being able to attatch specific functional groups to complex molecules is no small task. However, the controlled manipulation of these molecules and atoms in physical space is not something that classical Chemistry can do. It's tools developed by engineers and physicists that are now allowing the nex
      • Nah - you're missing my point. What you guys are doing blows my mind - it's years off being practical, but hell, you've got to start somewhere. What I'm having a go at is researchers dropping "nano" into a proposal to make it sell. Sometimes its appropriate, and would seem ideal in your area. But more often than not, it's not appropriate, and is corrupting the science. BTW, don't diss us organic chemists out of hand. Remember, we've been building things like brevetoxin for years, and that's only through ex

  • hmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @07:29AM (#13315529) Homepage Journal
    Why do I have the feeling that before too much longer, 'nano' will be the next big buzzword? Buy the new 'NanoPod Video Player!'

    Okay, sorry, I have nothing interesting to say about this article. Just remembering the good ol' days when every new exciting tech began with an E.

    • Re:hmm (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Buy the new 'NanoPod Video Player!'

      As if mp3 players weren't easy enough to lose already, you want to make them smaller?! :)

      On the other hand, if you make them that small, just implant them into the ear then you could call it an ePod and we can go full circle!

    • Re:hmm (Score:2)

      by plj ( 673710 )
      Buy the new 'NanoPod Video Player!'

      Bzzt. It is actually called nPod.

      But before it can be realized, nMac must appear first.
    • Remember the Nano virtual pets? (Nano Baby, Nano Dog, etc.)

  • Well... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Ichigo Kurosaki ( 886802 )
    When it come to the applications suitable to NASA, i.e. infinitely strong materials with almost no weight, It is more important to be able to control the actual bonding of atoms rather the atoms themselves.

    If you could bond two atoms together where the bonding forces are greater any force know to man, then you could every object one atom thick and indestructible.

    Imagine the bullet-proof clothing you could make out this or the weight of a spacecrafts fuel tank, or the weight of anything for that matter.

    • Uhm, sorry, nanotech does not deal with intra-atomic forces - or necessarily even with atomic-level positioning, for the most part. It deals with molecular-level positioning and manipulation - orders of magnitude bigger stuff.

      Atomic bonding belongs to the field of femtotech, if I'm not mistaken. Which is barely a gleam in someone's eye, at this point, AFAIK.

  • Pathetic.. (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by HEbGb ( 6544 )
    This is nothing more than an attempt by NASA to appear relevant. They're little more than a sink-hole for people's hard-earned money. Nano is the latest hype, designed only to keep them seeming at the forefront, so that congress can justify continuing to fund them.

    Disgusting.

  • "Grey goo" will increase space travel demand (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sounds like an ingenious marketing ploy to me.

    Once nanobots take over this planet in the form of Grey Goo... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo [wikipedia.org] Organic life's only hope for survival become space travel.

  • Wow (Score:4, Funny)

    by unts ( 754160 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @08:39AM (#13315671) Journal
    Nanotechnology is going to be huge!
  • I agree that NASA does do some great development work, and this will no doubt lead to many new and interesting discoveries.

    What I am really waiting for is the latest advance in materials science. Yes we have some cool alloys, and other composite metals (aluminum and ceramic composites, for example) but when are we truly going to develop or discover the really cool materials that are super light weight, and super strong, and exhibit properties like the materials that are occasionally, and allegedly discover

    • Well, actually, AFAIK no such metals have ever been discovered at UFO crash sites. Metals, yeah, but nothing superstrong - just unusual alloys.

      In fact, most of the stuff found from UFOs is some weird fluffy stuff. Like maybe alien semen from some bug jerking off as he flies over Washington...

      Or maybe that's how they flush their johns...

      There's a limit to how strong a physical material can be, IIRC, and we're not far from it now with some of our materials. Nanotech will only improve that so much. Drexler poi

  • End result (Score:3, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @08:50AM (#13315695)
    "As the result of a miscalculation involving metric vs imperial units, the entire NASA shuttle fleet was swallowed by a small dog"
  • to be able to control individual atoms and molecules

    This part is mostly hot air.

    well enough to design molecule-size machines, advanced electronics and "smart" materials."

    This actually might happen to a certain extent.
  • Nasa wants to land on the Muon!

  • Oil is the ticket (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Sgt_Nikon ( 131875 )
    Forget uses for NASA, how about create some nano machines that can create crude oil from garbage! All they need to do is rearrage the garabage molecules into crude oil or maybe hydrogen. Then the we can support our retarded "throw-away" society.

    • Shale oil extraction should be feasible with nanotech.

      Not to mention dumping nanotech into an oil field instead of water, thus avoiding destroying the oil fields like Saudi Arabia has been doing.

      More efficient solar cells and wind turbines and wave energy extractors will of course be possible as well.

      Not to mention more efficient engines to use the energy extracted.

      Could even lead to enabling technologies that might make figuring out how to do fusion easier - even cold fusion (nanotech instrumentation might
  • molecule sized machines? this could be interesting and by far scary, imagine a nano-spy unmanned vehicle or a keylogging hardware. tsktsk. it could happen.
  • The whole federal government is supporting nanotechnology [nano.gov]... and has for years [nano.gov].

  • nanotech reference from 1919 (Score:3, Funny)

    by johnrpenner ( 40054 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @12:21PM (#13316424) Homepage

    >> spoken in 1919:

    At the present time the Earth is going through its Fourth Round, and
    this is the mineral. During this time it is the task of mankind to work
    upon the mineral kingdom... We are now in the midst of this activity,
    and in the course of the next epochs, THE EARTH WILL HAVE TO BECOME
    COMPLETELY TRANSFORMED, SO THAT EVENTUALLY THERE WILL BE
    NO SINGLE ATOM ON THE EARTH THAT HAS NOT BEEN WORKED ON BY MAN.
    In earlier times these atoms became more and more solidified; now however
    they are becoming increasingly separated. Radio-activity did not exist in
    earlier times and could not therefore be discovered. It has only existed
    for a few thousand years, because now the atoms split up more and more.

    (Foundations of Esotericism [elib.com], Oct.5-1905, Rudolf Steiner Press, pp.66-67)

  • NASA's support for nanotech R and D is not surprising, given their concepts for the future of space exploration. A cornerstone of this new initiative depends completely on nanotechnology [or more properly molecular engineering] namely ANTS, the Autonomous NanoTechnology Swarm [nasa.gov]. NASA's ANTS site has very nice overviews and movies of the concepts and potential missions, in particular PAM, the Prospecting Asteroid Mission [nasa.gov].

    Briefly, PAM envisions spacecraft in the shape of a cube with a 10 cm edge, each with a

    • "All data collected during the survey is entrusted to a single cube"

      Which unfortunately is running Windows which BSODs upon hitting Earth's atmosphere, rendering the entire project worthless.

      Typical of NASA's reliance on single points of failure (or multiple points like fucking foam?)

      If you swarm outward, why not swarm inward and replicate the data so you're sure it gets back?

      And I don't even have a college degree and I can figure out that much.

      I guess that's why NASA is now developing a reputation for fail
      • "All data collected during the survey is entrusted to a single cube" Which unfortunately is running Windows which BSODs upon hitting Earth's atmosphere, rendering the entire project worthless.

        Running Windows? Where on the site does it say that? Also, where does it say that a 10cm cube is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere? According to the ANTS Enabling Technologies page, one of the enabling technologies for ANTS consists of

        "Intelligent Systems areas requiring development include advanced autonom

  • Maybe they are hoping nobody will notice if 7 micro-astronauts die.
  • With NASA on the beat, think about how quickly nanotech will advance! Look at all they've done for manned space flight in the last 20 years!

    "Quick! Everyone! Hide!"

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