Nanotechnology and the fight or flight mechanism

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by Pine_net, May 24, 2002.

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Would you leave earth?

  1. As soon as my Diamonoid Space ship is fully outfitted, I'm outa here!!

    7 vote(s)
    100.0%
  2. I'm going to stay and fight the good fight!!

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  1. Pine_net Chaos Product Registered Senior Member

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    Artwork by Craig Mullins

    With a mature nanotechnology it would be possible for people to run very very very far away from conflict such as war. The term refugee will be erased from our dictionary I believe. I can't see into the future, but luckily I was born with a brain that can plan ahead. So who here is getting off this rock when the time comes?
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2002
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  3. Adam §Þ@ç€ MØnk€¥ Registered Senior Member

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    I've always wanted to leave Earth anyway. See the universe. It's all too groovy to not wander around in it.
     
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  5. kmguru Staff Member

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    I do that everynight in my sleep....

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  7. Brett Bellmore Registered Senior Member

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    68
    Nanotechnology is promise and peril all rolled up in one neat package. It will at once give us the ability to spread beyond this planet, living off the enviroment in space, AND the ability to kill ourselves off once and for all, if we don't get some of our eggs out of this basket.

    Me, I'm heading for the Oort cloud at as many g's as I can pull, asap. If they manage to get through the transition peacefully, maybe I'll come back after a while.
     
  8. alanH Registered Senior Member

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    Hey, Brett, how are you doing?
     
  9. Carrot Registered Member

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    15
    Nanotechnology.

    Huge potential for good and bad.

    Bit like a lot of inventions really.
     
  10. Awaranowski Registered Senior Member

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    Dude. What would there be to fight about if people are free to move about the universe? I'd be like, "Okay! Take America! I'm going to.. paradise." Think about it. With nanotechnology, you could go anywhere you wanted and make it anything you want. If nanotechnology REALLY matures, you could manipulate matter at the subatomic level, in which case, here's what I would do.

    I would go to a suitable planet and chill there temporarily. Then I would take some self-replicating robots to another planet. And there, they would use the planet's matter to replicate itself an incredible amount of times. Then I could put them to work to make a new environment. They would take apart atoms and say, take protons from carbon and add them with the protons from other elements and make... oxygen. Lots of oxygen and nitrogen. And H2O. If I were talented enough of a programmer in about a year, I would have a paradise. Maybe I'll copy/paste a few more for each member of my family.
     
  11. dickbaby Banned Banned

    Messages:
    200
    Too true.

    Who would wanna hang around knocking seven bells out of x when you could be halfway across the universe in a private galaxy knee deep in your own personal paradise?

    Wanna go to work today? Nah, I'm gonna check out the third moon of Jaglan Beta. Don't wait up!

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  12. Nova1021 Registered Senior Member

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    I'm just wondering, what is it about nanotechnology that will make it easier to spread into the cosmos? I don't see what it will do to revolutionize space travel. What am i missing?
     
  13. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

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    I will fight for the planet and flee only if a full scale nuclear war goes out.
    It's 20 minutes, so I'll have to be fast and predict beforehand
     
  14. Pine_net Chaos Product Registered Senior Member

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    485
    Nanotechnology

    Quoted from
    "Engines of Creation"
    The Coming Era of Nanotechnology
    By K. Eric Drexler

    Quote

    Since nanotechnology lends itself to making small things, consider the smallest person-carrying spacecraft: the spacesuit. Forced to use weak, heavy, passive materials, engineers now make bulky, clumsy spacesuits. A look at an advanced spacesuit will illustrate some of the capabilities of nanotechnology.

    Imagine that you are aboard a space station, spun to simulate Earth's normal gravity. After instruction, you have been given a suit to try out: there it hangs on the wall, a gray, rubbery-looking thing with a transparent helmet. You take it down, heft its substantial weight, strip, and step in through the open seam on the front.

    The suit feels softer than the softest rubber, but has a slick inner surface. It slips on easily and the seam seals at a touch. It provides a skintight covering like a thin leather glove around your fingers, thickening as it runs up your arm to become as thick as your hand in the region around your torso. Behind your shoulders, scarcely noticeable, is a small backpack. Around your head, almost invisible, is the helmet. Below your neck the suits inner surface hugs your skin with a light, uniform touch that soon becomes almost imperceptible.

    You stand up and walk around, experimenting. You bounce on your toes and feel no extra weight from the suit. You bend and stretch and feel no restraint, no wrinkling, no pressure points. When you rub your fingers together they feel sensitive, as if bare - but somehow slightly thicker. As you breathe, the air tastes clean and fresh. In fact, you feel that you could forget that you are wearing a suit at all. What is more, you feel just as comfortable when you step out into the vacuum of space.

    The suit manages to do all this and more by means of complex activity within a structure having a texture almost as intricate as that of living tissue. A glove finger a millimeter thick has room for a thousand micron-thick layers of active nanomachinery and nanoelectronics. A fingertip-sized patch has room for a billion mechanical nanocomputers, with 99.9 percent of the volume left over for other components.

    In particular, this leaves room for an active structure. The middle layer of the suit material holds a three-dimensional weave of diamond-based fibers acting much like artificial muscle, but able to push as well as pull (as discussed in the Notes). These fibers take up much of the volume and make the suit material as strong as steel. Powered by microscopic electric motors and controlled by nanocomputers, they give the suit material its supple strength, making it stretch, contract, and bend as needed. When the suit felt soft earlier, this was because it had been programmed to act soft. The suit has no difficulty holding its shape in a vacuum; it has strength enough to avoid blowing up like a balloon. Likewise, it has no difficulty supporting its own weight and moving to match your motions, quickly, smoothly, and without resistance. This is one reason why it almost seems not to be there at all.

    Read on...
     
  15. Nova1021 Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    168
    Interesting, but i think a bit far fetched. I'm not saying its impossible, but a suit that complex would be very difficult to design and maintain. It says that it would be able to work even with failure of some of the nanotech, but i have doubts. Also, how to they propose to make the suit self contained for a person's food needs as they seemed to claim?

    They make it sound like people are a machine, we don't eat in the form of "watts" we eat carbohydrates, protiens, fats.

    Anywho, it all sounds very nice, but a little exaggerated. I'm sure our technology will eventually be that good, but not any time soon. Also i still don't see how this would make space travel itself any easier. It doesnt say anything about it revolutionizing propulsion, etc.
     
  16. Pine_net Chaos Product Registered Senior Member

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    485
    Nova1021,

    I urge you to read "Engines of Creation" The Coming Era of Nanotechnology
    By K. Eric Drexler. It's an excellent source on Nanotechnology related issues.

    In fact we are machines if you break the human power plant down into it's basic energy producing organisms which are, I'll give you a hint, starts with a M and ends with a A. And these little guys are in every one of your cells.

    Peace
     
  17. Emfuser Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    90
    Sign me up. I want to go exploring.

    If we could manage an effective way to traverse interstellar space or even intergalatic space in reasonable amounts of time, I would gladly spend the rest of my life poking around the universe.
     
  18. Pine_net Chaos Product Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    485
    Right on!
     

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