Suppose that someone found a way to make a molecular manufacturing system not much more complex than a DNA synthesizer. Not a full-blown diamondoid nanofactory, but something cobbled together out of (for example) a DNA staple matrix, a video projector, several computer-controlled valves...
Suppose that this hypothetical system could build, in a day, a few square millimeters of stuff with the strength of thin plastic wrap... but with many millions of features, atomic or near-atomic precision, actuators (but only flex bearings) and electronics, and the ability to attach DNA-tagged molecules or nanoparticles at selected locations by self-assembly.
I'm not immediately sure what this would be most useful for. It would not make full products, but it would probably be useful for custom electronics, and might be bootstrappable to a somewhat more capable molecular manufacturing system.
At the recent Maker Faire, I was impressed by the amount of diversity and creativity I saw: people taking quite primitive building blocks and making really cool (and sometimes even useful) stuff. So I'm assuming that this basic capability would be useful for something, and at least a few hobbyists would build and use the system.
How fast would general-purpose software be developed to drive it?
How fast would new materials become available?
How fast would better systems evolve?
It'll be very interesting to see what RepRap and its cousins do over the next few years. That may give us useful hints about the potential of really primitive molecular manufacturing systems.
Considering that by the time the first dna manufacturing units are used by these amatears, graphene nanotech will be pretty well developed, and dna nanotech is mostly about positioning various self-assembled(hence, atomically precise) molecules . . . well, I think your selling it a little short there Chris! Still, you probably need a well rounded techie especially with some good knowledge of structural mechanics to know how to enforce structural elements to make strong enough composite materials for say a manned space rocket which is what would come to my mind(and a functional space habitat); the question is how fast will techies be able to do enough creative work and learn all the skills needed to get that sophisticated before daimondoid(or harder) nanomanufacturing comes around? The answer is . . . probably not going to happen.
Posted by: the Oakster1 | June 08, 2009 at 10:03 PM
Heh, I'm not often accused of selling short any future possibility.
Manned space rockets are *big* and the technology space I'm talking about here would not be able to build large products efficiently.
That said, I'm sure that there will be many valuable applications for the kind of hybrid/baby step system I described.
Chris
Posted by: Chris Phoenix | June 10, 2009 at 09:18 PM