NASA and Nanotechnology

I remember where I was on July 20, 1969, when humans first walked on the moon. NASA's Apollo program, overall, was spectacularly successful.

In the 1970's, work began on a fleet of reusable space vehicles. For a while, everything went very smoothly. But then problems began occuring.

I remember where I was on January 25, 1986, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded.

As I'm writing now, on July 28, 2005, it looks like the space shuttle era could be over. Problems with falling foam may ground the shuttle fleet permanently. Considering that the craft's basic design is more than 30 years old, that's not a big surprise.

However, NASA isn't done yet. Their official site says: "The science of nanotechnology could lead to radical improvements for space exploration."

When it comes to taking the next "giant leap" in space exploration, NASA is thinking small -- really small.

In laboratories around the country, NASA is supporting the burgeoning science of nanotechnology. The basic idea is to learn to deal with matter at the atomic scale -- to be able to control individual atoms and
molecules well enough to design molecule-size machines, advanced electronics and "smart" materials.

If visionaries are right, nanotechnology could lead to robots you can hold on your fingertip, self-healing spacesuits, space elevators and other fantastic devices. Some of these things may take 20+ years to fully develop; others are taking shape in the laboratory today.

But wait, that's not all!

The long-term possibilities are truly mind-boggling.

The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC), an independent, NASA-funded organization located in Atlanta, Georgia, was created to promote forward-looking research on radical space technologies that will take 10 to 40 years to come to fruition.

For example, one recent NIAC grant funded a feasibility study of nanoscale manufacturing -- in other words, using vast numbers of microscopic molecular machines to produce any desired object by assembling it atom by atom!

That NIAC grant was awarded to Chris Phoenix of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. [emphasis added]

In his 112 page report, Phoenix explains that such a "nanofactory" could produce, say, spacecraft parts with atomic precision, meaning that every atom within the object is placed exactly where it belongs. The resulting part would be extremely strong, and its shape could be within a single atom's width of the ideal design. Ultra-smooth surfaces would need no polishing or lubrication, and would suffer virtually no "wear and tear" over time. Such high precision and reliability of spacecraft parts are paramount when the lives of astronauts are at stake.

Although Phoenix sketched out some design ideas for a desktop nanofactory in his report, he acknowledges that -- short of a big-budget "Nanhattan Project," as he calls it -- a working nanofactory is at least a decade away, and possibly much longer.

We congratulate Chris Phoenix on his remarkable work for NIAC, and for this much-deserved recognition on NASA's website.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology space weblog blog

Comments

[michael vassar]

Major congradulations are in order indeed. Good Job!

[michael vassar]

It's gone from you bragging about your association with NASA to them bragging about their association with you!
Of course, in a sane world no-one would Want to be associated with today's NASA, given that they are obviously incapable, with today's technology, of even accomplishing the tasks that they could accomplish a generation ago with computers a million times worse, manufacturing precision an order of magnitude coarser, etc. This may show something about the degeneration of government initiatives in general over time, especially when operating under the wrong ethical system. In a short burst, government interventin CAN do wonders, but by doing them it undermines the commercial and idealist systems that make long term progress self-sustaining.
Beyond that, I am seriously worried about the health of today's guardian systems in general. Seriously the reaction to terrorism has started to frighten me. I know enough history to see that there have been similar retractions of civil liberties in US history before, but a) never in response to so feeble an opponent, and b) never with the real prospect of open-ended continuation of the trend. The most important question, it seems to me, is this; Was the rapid loss of civil rights associated with the Civil War and the World Wars limited by caps on the speed at which American citizens were willing to surrender their freedoms, or was it associated with an absolute limit on what people in a particular generation were willing to accept. The former suggests a continuation of the recent trend until "the end of evil" is achieved. The latter suggests that the situation will soon stabilize.
The guardians of the US have definitely stopped seeing themselves as members of "the people", or representatives or whatever. In addition to their loss of "make rich use of leisure", I think "be fatalistic" and "shun trading" are severely degraded. The whole idea of leftism is a rebuttal of "be fatalistic", from universal education to the "great society". More recently, the right has lost its fatalism and gone in for every utopian oppression from to the war on drugs to the war on cancer to the war on terror. Pretending that long term social problems are enemies to be defeated in war is the opposite of fatalism. Another trait that may be degraded, shockingly, is the core trait "defend your territory". In 2001, a larger fraction of the population of Washington DC was murdered by ordinary crime than the fraction of NY murdered by terrorism! That figure ignores the larger number forcibly raped, and the 20-fold larger number subjected to aggravated assult. One can argue over the practicality of imposing rule of law in the worst parts of DC, but you can't really argue that the government has stopped really trying to impose rule of law in the nation's capital. There is serious argument over whether there is more murder in DC than in Baghdad, but few objections to the claim that the only non-warring country as violent is Columbia. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,105954,00.html Fortitude and Adherence to Tradition are also sadly lacking. In fact, it seems clear that most modern political leadership are simply not aware of the existance of tested traditions of democratic rule, and that "showing fortitude" is seen by the leadership of both parties (and probably by most voters, though to a degree voters are told what to think) as "doing nothing". Everyone is used to the phrase "we have to do something" by now.
We need to move towards some ideas which enable us to understand how some guardian and some commercial entities are basically benign (say the government of Sweden or General Electric) while others, even while obeying their systems rather well, are essentially malign. The Huns for instance, were pretty good guardians, though their loyalty was spotty. Better to hold up as an example those perfect followers of the guardian Way, the Samuri and the Spartans. Among commercial entities, Phillip Morris is a zealot for all rules other than "be honest", which is frankly a rather questionable and conditional commercial guideline. One can make a strong argument that slave traders adhered to even this aspect of their system, and that they were totally uncontaminated by guardian traits.