Robert, your enthusiasm is astounding. Where are the off-the-shelf
> microplate sapphire suits?
Sorry, not here yet. We can't even assemble sapphire at the molecular
level yet. But we do have a design for an internalized sapphire
wet-suit:
"Vasculoid: A Personal Nanomedical Appliance to Replace Human Blood"
http://www.jetpress.org/volume11/vasculoid.html
I looked up the website. First, to counter those who might suggest that a vasculoid, or any other of Robert Bradbury's concepts, do not apply to a discussion of Europa, I must say:
1) this website draws its strength from breadth of ideas, not constriction, and
2) if a vasculoid COULD be developed, it would certainly find high utility in space applications.
A vasculoid system is apparently a concept for the creation of billions of nanosized platelets, to cover the internal surfaces of every blood vessel in the human body, and increase the efficiency of blood, by replacing it with nanomachine transfer devices.
Number one problem: it doesn't exist yet. The paper itself states that it is an entirely theoretical system -- NOT a working design. Problem number two: there is no one that I know who wants to be the first test subject. Animals might be 'recruited' to test it out, but that would require years and years of testing. In the end, you're going to have to have a real person test this thing, to give a true idea of whether it really improves on what we've already evolved over 300 billion years of evolution.
Problem number three: presuming that a vasculoid system was created, and that you were able to successfully transfer it to a person... presuming it works entirely as designed... You STILL have the 'unforeseen circumstances' issue. That is, for all we know,the vasculoids could detach themselves from the walls of blood vessels, and form clots in the brain, or human tissues might develop an adverse reaction to sapphire, or an outside electrical charge could find that sapphire vasculoids make a surprisingly good conductor, or, or, or...
I consider an externalized version of that to be a relatively
minor derivative. A combination of these may also be necessary
to solve the pressure problems one finds at great depths in
Europa's oceans (I haven't seen any figures on this -- it would
be interesting to compare them with diving in Earth's oceans).
We discussed pressures at some length in prior rounds. Some feel that the pressure would be significantly higher than Earthside pressures, or no greater than one might find in the Marianna Trench, for instance. Others feel that the very light Europan gravity might play a factor in decreasing pressures.
I don't see the pressure factor as a true problem. For one thing, we have no presence on Europa at all, so planning for diving expeditions there seems a moot point. In a best case scenario, we may have a tinker-toy robot on Europa by 2020 or so. You're planning for the year 2200, Robert, not 2003 or 2010. We need to go through the necessary middle steps, before we can start planning on how we're going to go on SCUBA dives there.
> Where can I pick up a six-pack of nanotech machines?
Can't yet, unless you want to find a health food store that
sells unpasturized yoghurt. But people are working on it.
The U.S. political establishment is very aware that they are
being outspent in this area around the world (Europe, the
Asian tigers, China, etc.) so it seems unlikely that support
for research in these areas will decrease in the future.
Why is it that so many scientists and theoreticians demand that the government support their activities, when it seems that
1) we already have off-the-shelf technology that can be assembled to get the job done, eg, Clement's plan to use small commercial rockets to drop a probe on Toutatis, etc, and
2) private industry can provide plenty of support for research, IF there's money in it (and if there is not a profit in it, ie, incentive, then why would you want to develop it in the first place? The 'wonders of science' routine will only take you so far).
Personally, I'm not that concerned that Singapore is going to get to Mars first. Nor am I really all that concerned about China, yet. Much of China is still working with water buffaloes in agriculture. As soon as they finish the Yangtze Dam, they may find that it is like the Aswan Dam: a great idea, at least for the first 20 years. After that, acccumulated deficits to the project may cause some to question the original project, by which time it will be too late.
China is going to spend the next 30 years playing catch-up with the West. They're still working out the messy details of providing consumer goods to 1.5 billion people, at an equitable enough distribution rate to keep the lid on. Meanwhile, of course, they'll have to figure out what to do with the pollution produced by a billion cars, a billion refridgerators, and the instability created by 500 million pushy yuppies.
> Has AIEVEOS produced any marketable stocks of nanotech machinery?
That isn't the raison d'etre for Aeiveos. However a partially
owned subsidiary, Robiobotics, is attempting to enable the path
to "biobots" since that development path is much clearer. Once
one has biobots, then there will be a huge amount of pressure
to develop the paths to real nanobots.
If, if, if....
Show me the money.
(The only difference
between biobots and nanobots is the stiffness of the structural
components they contain based on the number of covalent bonds per
unit volume.
In science book terms, maybe. You're forgetting the messy details: humanity is not the servant of science. We are not a giant resource and tax base for science projects.
In this case, the messy details might include the following: who pays for it? who covers liability costs? Can this technology be misused? If you start to replace significant portions of a human anatomy with replacement parts, is it a person, or a cyborg? What happens when 1% of your population has new and improved parts, and 99% of them can't afford them? Reverse it. What happens if 99% of humans are more efficient... how do you tell them to stop breeding? Sure, you might be able to whip up space, food, shelter for 1 trillion humans... but, now you're really starting to talk theory.
The trouble is, people aren't theory. They're practical.
Once you have "real" nanobots, a exo-sapphire-dry-suit
is a small exercise for a graduate student.
Once we figure out relativity, time travel should be a small exercise for a graduate student.
Robert
Again, I ask: show me a WORKING model of a nanobot, that can do some useful activity.
-- John
