Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: dan-hankins@cup.portal.com Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: Nanotechnology Message-ID: Date: 5 Nov 90 23:40:48 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 44 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , dutchman@wpi.wpi.edu (jonathan) writes: >I raise my hand in disagreement. The energy it takes to develop these new >processes has to come from somewhere. I think it's going to be a very close >call - whether we can develop nanotech to clean up our atmosphere, our >bodies, do very large scale molecular construction, etc., or we run out of >oil, then coal, then wood, causing either the next ice age or a heavy-duty >heat wave. If we don't have the energy, we won't have an economy. There's lots of potential energy in hydrogen, and lots of hydrogen in Earth's oceans. The Princeton Tokamak (TFTR) just last month reached predicted scientific break-even. The combination of nanotech and fusion technology promises to put safe, usable fusion energy into the price range and space requirements of the middle-income individual. Even without the extra energy, nanotech should be more efficient than current processes. The precision of being able to direct the positioning of individual molecules virtually guarantees it. The human body is a nanotech machine. Consider how efficient it is. It is possible to design nanotech machines even more efficient than that. Dan Hankins dan-hankins@cup.portal.com dan-hankins@pro-realm.cts.com Freedom: I won't. [I'm not terribly sanguine about fusion in the near to medium term. Nanotech could put clean *fission* in the reach of any homeowner sooner. It could make solar and geothermal economic, revolutionize energy storage, etc, etc. There's really no need to worry about the availability of energy except in the near term. The human body is an incredibly *inefficient* machine, as are all higher organisms. We should expect at least an order of magnitude improvement from nanotech--what we give up is the ability of the mechanism to evolve, which is coincidentally something we greatly desire to leave out of our nano-engineered gadgetry. --JoSH]