Found in 3 comments on Hacker News
jfoutz · 2009-01-27
· Original
thread
here's a book he wrote... 18 years ago. there's great stuff in there. how to build a computer out of rod logic. how get pure sources of elements by cascading filters... armatures for assembling individual atoms.
http://www.amazon.com/Nanosystems-Molecular-Machinery-Manufa...
Richard Feynman apparently had recursive ideas, use a lathe to make a tiny lathe, use the tiny lathe to make a really really tiny lathe... all the way down.
This is the future... but probably a long way away.
jey · 2007-08-27
· Original
thread
I doubt a lego-scale model would help much, the forces and effects involved at the molecular scale are much different. However, K. Eric Drexler, father of the field of molecular nanotechnology, has done some theoretical work to show that it's feasible in his book "Engines of Creation". A newly revised version of it is available for free as an eBook: http://www.wowio.com/users/product.asp?BookId=503
A more technically oriented book is "Nanosystems": http://www.amazon.com/Nanosystems-Molecular-Machinery-Manufa...
The north star is that there are some people on Mars who know that the stream of supplies from Earth will stop and that their children having a future is contingent on being able to manufacture everything from metal to plastics to microchips and pharmaceuticals with as small a population and industrial base as possible.
Closer to home and more urgent are problems such as decarbonization, relocalization, etc. If a doctor on Mars needs a synthesizer which can make mRNA, peptide and protein-based drugs for any condition, so does a doctor in Rwanda. Drexler's program in
https://www.amazon.com/Nanosystems-P-K-Eric-Drexler/dp/04715...
has definitely not progressed. Maybe we can't make a 1kg machine that can make itself and everything else, but could we shrink the manufacturing base such that a population of 1M people could be self-sufficient at a high technology level? Can we make all the things that we depend on and be carbon neutral? Can we continue the miniaturization of electronics?
Getting just part of the way to those goal could pay rich dividends.