Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!usc!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: cphoenix@csli.Stanford.EDU (Chris Phoenix) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Crash protection (was Re: Utility Fog) Message-ID: Date: 23 Aug 89 18:48:46 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 50 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu Why use an external fog for crash protection? Why not have it built in to your body all the time? You could remove, say, one cell in 5 or 6 in your bones and blood vessels. In the extra space, put nanotech structures which are normally very flexible-- but if they detect breakage, or acceleration over 10 G's, they link and stiffen. This gives not only crash protection, but also cut and bruise and broken bone protection. And it removes the problem of brain sloshing, since the brain would be held immobile by its interior blood vessels, with maybe some cross-bracing to the skull. You might have to provide some extra bracing around fluid-filled cavities such as the heart and digestive system, but it shouldn't be too hard to design. Questions: How much injury could you prevent without making the system trigger too often? If such a thing were invented, it would almost certainly be modified for remote-control, say of prisoners. This raises issues I'm not going to get into. If the crash were intense enough to trigger the system around the heart, you would basically stop it beating on the order of a second. How easy would it be to make absolutely sure it would start again? Having such a system would encourage people to take more risks, such as diving off bridges just for kicks. Eventually, someone would make it fail. What then? You could, I suppose, build in a broadcast system, so that whenever something major triggered it, it would call an ambulance. If you were found without a car wreck nearby, you'd be in trouble. How strong could you make it, anyway? Would you have to displace too much tissue to get a workable system? I stuck to blood vessel walls because they go almost everywhere and aren't used for too much, but would you have to go outside them to have a workable system? How much acceleration could someone protected this way handle? In a sci-fi book I read, there was the suggestion of a transportation system based on many tiny fibers that went through your body structure and then were pulled very fast to where you wanted to go. Could this be used as part of a similar system? Just put you in an acceleration frame, then shoot you wherever at 100 G's. -- Chris Phoenix | I'm a paranoid schizophrenic! I'm after me! cphoenix@csli.Stanford.EDU | "More input! More input!" For every idiot-proof system, a new improved idiot will arise to overcome it. Disclaimer: I want a kinder, gentler net with a thousand pints of lite. [Well, suppose we replaced all the collagen in our bodies with diamond fiber. We might be significantly tougher. This gets into the area of remaking ourselves, which I personally think is a more difficult subject than designing things from scratch, but sure is interesting. Rather than simple accident protection, the first thing I expect to see is (a) increasing strength and stamina (b) ability to survive in extreme environments (space, Antarctica, undersea) and/or (c) real time polymorphism under conscious control. --JoSH]