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Biotech Science Technology

Microbes Produce Precursor To Missile Propellent 41

Posted by timothy from the those-clever-microbes dept.
Makarand writes "According to this article on ScienceDaily.com microbiologists at the Michigan State University have created strains of bacteria which can convert certain types of sugars into a non-natural synthetic material, called butanetriol, which is used to produce a missile propellant (butanetriol trinitrate). The DNA of bacteria like Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas fragi was altered so that these bacteria could act as minifactories producing butanetriol. Interestingly, butanetriol is a precursor to two cholesterol-lowering drugs making this process useful in both pharmaceutical and defense applications."
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Microbes Produce Precursor To Missile Propellent More

Microbes Produce Precursor To Missile Propellent

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  • more missile propellent. God forbid we should research a cure for AIDS or Cancer when we can research new ways to create missile propellent! Because missile propellent is so much more important than real scientific research these days in America. Gotta arm ourselves because everyone except us is a terrorist!

    You may disagree with my cynicism but you know I'm right...
    • Let's see where the problem is, according to the article:

      1. It's cleaner for the environment. (a good thing)

      2. It's more efficient and less costly. (saving you money == a good thing)

      3. Used in medicines as well as missles. (many uses == a good thing)

      4. The process can potentially be used to create other materials in a similar way, which may, who knows, help the fight against AIDs and cancer. (a good thing)

      Which part of this don't you like? Missles are going to be propelled one way or the other, so why
      • You're mostly correct that this is all good - and I suspect Kethinov might have had trolling on the ajenda somewhere, however it goes on to say in the article how the Navy was all excited that they could [produce five or six times as many missiles].

        (Yeah, I'm assuming that going from 30,000 pounds to 180,000 pounds means six times as many missiles when they also stated they would be able to use this stuff instead of nitro-glycerine for some other things ... but I'm also assuming that the other things were
      • Not to mention the whole "missile propellant == satellite launch propellant" thing.
    • Right, because butanetriol is a precursor to two cholesterol-lowering drugs isn't a good enough reason.

      Or maybe you didn't know that diseases of the heart are the number one killer in the United States. If you don't believe me, the stats from 2001, available from the CDC, have 700,142 deaths attributed to diseases of the heart giving it a whopping 29% of the total deaths.

      Here is the link to the pdf
      http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_09 .pdf
    • Let me start out be saying that I take no position on any of the recent conflicts america has been involved in, so don't take this post as support of our current iraqi campain.

      We humans tend to be a blood thirsty species (in general). Those nations that are weak in implements of war tend to be destroyed over the long term. Hell, even those who are strong in war tend to be destroyed but it generally takes a bit longer. My point is that as much as the more 'liberal' minded people hate it war is a required
    • Why do you need the hardware you have? You should sell it and give the money over to AIDS and/or cancer research.

      From you site.

      My setup:
      Architecture: x86
      Motherboard: Asus A7M266D, 30.5cm x 24.5cm
      Processors: Dual AMD Athlon MP 1200mhz Socket A
      Bus Architecture: 3xPCI 33-MHz 32-bit Slots, 2xPCI 66/33-MHz 64/32-bit Slots, 1xAGP Pro/AGP 4X
      FSB Speed: 200/266 MHZ
      System Memory: 512mb ECC PC2100 DDR
      Max Memory: 3.5GB registered or 2GB unbuffered (4 registered or 2 unbuffered DDR DIMMs)
      Max System Memory speed: 2.1G
      • How petty. I wonder how you feel about people running 64 bit machines for their own personal ego boost. Compared to that my setup is obsolete.

        If you must know, that setup is essentially a combination of computer parts I've gathered over the last 10 years. Some of it is extremely old. Most notably the case, the 20gb hard drive, and the 20" TV. I'd estimate I've spent no more than $3000 dollars on my hardware in the last decade (which is a generous figure) which averages out to $300 a year. How many of us on
    • Jeasus, don't you liberal wankers ever get tired of being wrong?

    • Congratulations (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You are the lucky recipient of the 500,000th positive mod point to be wasted on a "they should be working on a cure for cancer instead" troll! Tell him what he's won, Bob!

      Well, Lisa, our lucky winner Kethinov will have all work that previously would've been done to make other things in his life donated to the cause for cancer. His auto mechanic will begin working on a cure for cancer instead of fixing his car. His favorite restraunt chefs will be joining the cause as well. His alumni association has be
    • Don't take this comment to mean that I support or protest US involvement in Iraq. In some countries that the US helps, missles and other weapons are needed to get medicines, food, and supplies beyond the local warlords, and into the homes of the starving. Perhaps you should do an "Ask Slashdot" on how best to aid countries with medicine and supplies without the use of force while local warlords and/or dictators view the surpressing the aid as a means of keeping the population under their command. I can i
    • Your right. The US has done no research on cancer or AIDs. We can put a man on the moon but...
      Wait the US does spend money on Cancer and AIDs research. Humm so this is a load of self loathing rubbish.
      I really doubt that the goal was to make missle fuel. It was to make a chemical. That chemical can be used for many things. Glad to see has been moded down to a 1.
  • If it converts sugar into anything it could have a beneficial effect in that sugar comsumption is known to 'assist' people in gaining weight. Start using the sugar supplies to make weapons then youre not going to have as much for making sweet foodstuffs. hence over time less obesity. However if you do make weapons out of sugars then youre enabling a means of reducing the consumer base anyway! Not a very nice way of reducing people's weight or morally ethical

  • Resourceful little buggers (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The bacterial flora in my gut are also capable of producing a lethal nerve gas (lethal to the nerve cells of surrounding noses, at the very least).
  • I like the idea of using sugar as a propellant. Sugar is a very easily renewable resource and regular table sugar breaks down into carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. c12 h22 o11 which of course are all relatively friendly to our environment. I would like to see more cars run off of sugar based fuels IE ethanol.
  • ..does that mean that we will have Intercontiental Beerlistic Missles?

  • This explains something that has been bothering me (Score:3, Funny)

    by Hoi Polloi ( 522990 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @10:18AM (#7845133) Journal
    Now I know why I fart like a space shuttle launch after eating Indian food. Guess I'd better not try lighting them.

  • Two thoughts on this (Score:4, Insightful)

    by chia_monkey ( 593501 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @11:02AM (#7845519) Journal
    First thought...just how much of this propellant can be produced by these microbes? It really seems like you'd need quite a bit to launch a missle. Can this be done from the work of some microbes?

    Second...people will complain about how money is being spent on military research, but let's look at the positive here. It's a precursor to lowering colesterol. Who knows when we'll be working on developing some sort of funky things to melt enemy tires or something and come up with a compound that kills only cancer cells and leaves all other cells unharmed. It's exciting in an odd sort of way.
    • I'm guessing that the microbes follow the standard bacterial exponential growth curve in ideal conditions, so I don't think getting enough microbes is going to be an issue.

    • Re:Two thoughts on this (Score:4, Funny)

      by tigeba ( 208671 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:32PM (#7847534)
      "First thought...just how much of this propellant can be produced by these microbes? It really seems like you'd need quite a bit to launch a missle. Can this be done from the work of some microbes?"

      Replace "propellant" with "alcohol" and "launch a missle" with "supply the fans at an NFL game" and proceed to ponder your question.

  • ...have created strains of bacteria which can convert certain types of sugars into a non-natural synthetic material, called butanetriol, which is...

    There is something in that sentence that bothers me. Can you guess? Thats right. That butanetriol is non-natural!

    If sugars are natural and bacteria are natural, how can their interaction produce something non-natural? Why have scientists come along and declared this very natural process a unnatural?

  • Stage trees anyone?
  • There are other [beagle2.com] uses for this sort of thing.
    The shoesting budget on which it was created ($62M 40M pounds, for those of you across the pond) could have been better spent if the launch was cheaper.
    Perhaps holding out hope [slashdot.org] would have better chances of paying off if they had another million that didn't go into fuel.
    I feel that this sort of technology should be given lots of support. Projects like beagle2 define my favorite human drive, the drive to explore and learn. Just beacuse this could kill someone
  • Assuming that the obvious difficulties of maintaining bacteria in a hostile environment such as Mars could be surmounted it seems that this biotechnology would serve as the basis for manufacturing the fuel needed for the return flight leg of a manned Mars mission. Would have to supply carbon in a form other than sugar, perhaps all that frozen C02? And let's not forget about the moon, produce massive amounts of rocket fuel there in order to send the astronauts to Mars in the first place.

    • There are a whole lot of bacteria that wouldn't consider the Martian environment hostile. Engineers expend a lot of effort sterilizing Mars landers so as not to contaminate the Martian environment with terrestrial life forms. It would be a scientific mistake to send a vat of earthly bugs up to Mars when one of the biggest questions to be answered is whether life has evolved there and what form(s) it takes. Even if, in the future, we discover life there, we would still want to avoid contamination for a long
  • This might have implications for abiotic oil [gasresources.net] research.

    If microbes can produce proto-rocket fuel, is it such a stretch to believe they can create crude oil as well?

  • I find it kind of ironic that there are soooo many people that want to bitch about any technological breakthrough or scientific achievment that has military application, yet the internet itself largely started due to the US military's network. The reason most of us on slashdot have multiple personal computers is the military pumped uncountable dollars into computer research and advancement because it helped them fight wars better. We would not have been able to put a man into space if it were not because
  • Rocket propellent would help the PR of these microbes. The conversation here seems to say missiles kill people (they do), so lets say rockets do not, they launch for exploration or research. Though busting a hole through the sky with very large rockets it is probably best to leave a steam trail than solid rocket fuel residue but they could be used as they are, boosters.
  • Sugarcane offers the highest photosynthetic efficiency (8% of insolation converted to chemical bonds in glucose) of any measured in plants. That's about the same as cheap solar PV cells, without the vastly higher costs of manufacturing and pollution from PV cells. Sugarcane is an interesting storage medium for the energy, with cheap, durable, lossless packaging, compared with the inefficiency of high voltage powerlines from PV farms. However, even the best fuelcells get only about 40% of the stored energy f
  • 2004 will be the year where the US launches the first balistic bacteria at al quada ;-]

    M

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