Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: well!nagle@lll-crg.llnl.gov (John Nagle) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: Is active shield design intractable? Keywords: active shields, isolation Message-ID: Date: 16 Jun 89 02:42:43 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 16 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu One approach that would work, although it would be a rather dull society, would be a society of space habitats with very limited physical interaction, each equipped with defenses capable of vaporizing anything incoming down to the molecule level. This is a last-ditch solution, though. It may turn out that nanotechnology is power-limited. In a vat, with power and suitable working fluids supplied, you may be able to achieve high-speed assembly. In the outside world, the available power may limit how fast an attacker could propagate. It may well limit how effective nanomachines can be without macro-scale support systems. But this remains to be seen. John Nagle John Nagle