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
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