Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: nanotechnology – Page 323

From the Unemumerated blog, this piece was originally written in 1993:

Using materials native to space, instead of hauling everything from Earth, is crucial to future efforts at large-scale space industrialization and colonization. At that time we will be using technologies far in advance of today’s, but even now we can see the technology developing for use here on earth.

There are a myriad of materials we would like to process, including dirty organic-laden ice on comets and some asteroids, subsurface ice and the atmosphere of Mars, platinum-rich unoxidized nickel-iron metal regoliths on asteroids, etc. There are an even wider array of materials we would like to make. The first and most important is propellant, but eventually we want a wide array of manufacturing and construction inputs, including complex polymers like Kevlar and graphite epoxies for strong tethers.

The advantages of native propellant can be seen in two recent mission proposals. In several Mars mission proposals[1], H2 from Earth or Martian water is chemically processed with CO2 from the Martian atmosphere, making CH4 and O2 propellants for operations on Mars and the return trip to Earth. Even bringing H2 from Earth, this scheme can reduce the propellant mass to be launched from Earth by over 75%. Similarly, I have described a system that converts cometary or asteroidal ice into a cylindrical, zero-tank-mass thermal rocket. This can be used to transport large interplanetary payloads, including the valuable organic and volatile ices themselves into high Earth and Martian orbits.

Earthside chemical plants are usually far too heavy to launch on rockets into deep space. An important benchmarks for plants in space is the thruput mass/equipment mass, or mass thruput ratio (MTR). At first glance, it would seem that almost any system with MTR>1 would be worthwhile, but in real projects risk must be reduced through redundancy, time cost of money must be accounted for, equipment launched from earth must be affordable in the first place (typically

A special consideration is the operation of chemical reactors in microgravity. So far all chemical reactors used in space — mostly rocket engines, and various kinds of life support equipment in space stations — have been designed for microgravity. However, Earthside chemical plants incorporate many processes that use gravity, and must be redesigned. Microgravity may be advantageous for some kinds of reactions; this is an active area of research. On moons or other plants, we are confronted with various fixed low levels of gravity that may be difficult to design for. With a spinning tethered satellite in free space, we can get the best of all worlds: microgravity, Earth gravity, or even hypergravity where desired.

A bigger challenge is developing chemical reactors that are small enough to launch on rockets, have high enough thruput to be affordable, and are flexible enough to produce the wide variety of products needed for space industry. A long-range ideal strategy is K. Eric Drexler’s nanotechnology [2]. In this scenario small “techno-ribosomes”, designed and built molecule by molecule, would use organic material in space to reproduce themselves and produce useful product. An intermediate technology, under experimental research today, uses lithography techniques on the nanometer scale to produce designer catalysts and microreactors. Lithography, the technique which has made possible the rapid improvement in computers since 1970, has moved into the deep submicron scale in the laboratory, and will soon be moving there commercially. Lab research is also applying lithography to the chemical industry, where it might enable breakthroughs to rival those it produced in electronics.

Tim May has described nanolithography that uses linear arrays of 1e4-1e5 AFM’s that would scan a chip and fill in detail to 10 nm resolution or better. Elsewhere I have described a class of self-organizing molecules called _nanoresists_, which make possible the use of e-beams down to the 1 nm scale. Nanoresists range from ablatable films, to polymers, to biological structures. A wide variety of other nanolithography techniques are described in [4,5,6]. Small-scale lithography not only improves the feature density of existing devices, it also makes possible a wide variety of new devices that take advantage of quantum effects: glowing nanopore silicon, quantum dots (“designer atoms” with programmable electronic and optical properties), tunneling magnets, squeezed lasers, etc. Most important for our purposes, they make possible to mass production of tiny chemical reactors and designer catalysts. Lithography has been used to fabricate a series of catalytic towers on a chip [3]. The towers consist of alternating layers of SiO2 4.1 nm thick and Ni 2–10 nm thick. The deposition process achieves nearly one atom thickness control for both SiO2 and Ni. Previously it was thought that positioning in three dimensions was required for good catalysis, but this catalyst’s nanoscale 1-d surface force reagants into the proper binding pattern. It achieved six times the reaction rate of traditional cluster catalysts on the hydrogenolysis of ethane to methane, C2H6 + H2 –> 2CH4. The thickness of the nickel and silicon dioxide layers can be varied to match the size of molecules to be reacted.

Catalysts need to have structures precisely designed to trap certain kinds of molecules, let others flow through, and keep still others out, all without getting clogged or poisoned. Currently these catalysts are built by growing crystals of the right spacing in bulk. Sometimes catalysts come from biotech, for example the bacteria used to grow the corn syrup in soda pop. Within this millenium (only 7.1 years left!) we will start to see catalysts built by new techniques of nanolithography, including AFM machining, AFM arrays and nanoresists Catalysts are critical to the oil industry, the chemical industry and to pollution control — the worldwide market is in the $100’s of billions per year and growing rapidly.

There is a also big market for micron-size chemical reactors. We may one day see the flexible chemical plant, with hundreds of nanoscale reactors on a chip, the channels between them reprogrammed via switchable valves, much as the circuits on a chip can be reprogrammed via transitors. Even a more modest, large version of such a plant could have a wide variety of uses.

Their first use may be in artificial organs to produce various biological molecules. For example, they might replace or augment the functionality of the kidneys, pancreas, liver, thyroid gland, etc. They might produce psychoactive chemicals inside the blood-brain barrier, for example dopamine to reverse Parkinson’s disease. Biological and mechanical chemical reactors might work together, the first produced via metaboic engineering[7], the second via nanolithography.

After microreactors, metabolic engineering, and nanoscale catalysts have been developed for use on Earth, they will spin off for use in space. Microplants in space could manufacture propellant, a wide variety of industrial inputs and perform life support functions more efficiently. Over 95% of the mass we now launch into space could be replaced by these materials produced from comets, asteroids, Mars, etc. Even if Drexler’s self-replicating assemblers are a long time in coming, nanolithographed tiny chemical reactors could open up the solar system.

====================
ref:
[1] _Case for Mars_ conference proceedings, Zubrin et. al.
papers on “Mars Direct“
[2] K. Eric Drexler, _Nanosystems_, John Wiley & Sons 1992
[3] Science 20 Nov. 1992, pg. 1337.
[4] Ferry et. al. eds., _Granular Nanoelectronics_, Plenum Press 1991
[5] Geis & Angus, “Diamond Film Semiconductors”, Sci. Am. 10/92
[6] ???, “Quantum Dots”, Sci. Am. 1/93
[7] Science 21 June 1991, pgs. 1668, 1675.

These microreactors have a multiplicity of uses in various Lifeboat-relevant endeavors, including making human beings more resistant against harmful diseases. Molecular nanotechnology, rather than being long-range, is likely to be developed between 2010 and 2020. The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology has written at length in favor of this view.

There were several significant developments and announcements that were nanotechnology related.

The UK Ideas Factory Sandpit announced three ambitious, but in my opinion achievable projects in the 2–5 year timeframe.

1. A system with software based control for the assembly of DNA oligomers, nanopartices and other small molecules. This would be a significant advance over current DNA synthesis if they are successful.

2. Computer-directed actuators with sub-angstrom precisions that is based upon novel surface-bound, reconfigurable nanoscale building blocks and a prototype computer-controlled matter manipulator (akin to a nanoscale conveyor belt)

3. A matter compiler project which is to make the engineering control system to direct molecular assembly These announced projects could prompt the funding of more projects with aggressive molecular nanotechnology related objectives. If that was the case then this could be the beginning of a technological race.

Dwave systems has announced the date for the demonstration of their 16 qubit quantum computer

Dwave systems has a current roadmap with well over 1,000 by the end of 2008.

There are some quantum algorithms that can’t be run using the current architecture. The technical reason for this is that the devices that couple qubits i and j are of the \sigma_z^{i} \sigma_z^{j} type. There are some 16-qubit states that can’t be generated with the X + Z + ZZ Hamiltonian. Their roadmap includes the addition of an XZ coupler to their architecture, which will make their systems universal. The reason for doing this is that they plan to build processors specifically for quantum simulation, which represents a big commercial opportunity.

Their roadmap has an introduction of a quantum simulation processor line in 2009. NOTE: 1000 qubits would enable 2**1000 states or about 10**300. 10**80 is the number of atoms in the observable universe The 2009, 1000+ qubit quantum simulation processor would be a big boost for molecular nanotechnology research.

Honeycomb nanotubes have been created by a team in China They appear to be able to transfer the high single tube strength to the macroscale. These along with Carbon nanotube Superthreads (which was announced in 2006) seem like part of a wave of big carbon nanotube developments. They should have significant commercial impact and the potential of carbon nanotubes to strengthen and alter products will be significantly realized in 2007. The other thing that I draw from this is that the advances are happening in North America, Europe and China.

From United Press International:

DAYTON, Calif., Dec. 20 (UPI) — The U.S. Army awarded a $15 million contract for the development of a new type of lightweight composite armor based on nanotechnology.

The pact awarded to the University of Dayton Research Institute (UDRI) this week will lead to new materials that can be used in vehicles and body armor.

“This is not a ground-level academic study project,” UDRI engineer Brian Rice said. “We are actually working with two Ohio companies to create a product that, if it tests out well, could show up in Iraq next year.”

Armor Holdings and TPI Composites are also involved in the project, which is under the auspices of the Army Research Laboratory. Rice said Dayton would be working with the two companies specifically on an armor package for Humvees and armored vehicles.

UDRI is home to one of the leading ballistics labs in the United States.

Rice said the planned armor “will be even stronger than existing armor, but also lighter, to reduce the top weight of the ‘up-armored’ vehicle.”

He also assured that engineers would be looking into reducing the flammability and flexibility issues inherent in many composite materials as an improvement in body armor.

UDRI said in a statement that the research would also likely lead to advances in protective materials for police and firefighters as well as other civilian applications such as vehicles, rail cars and wind-turbine blades.

There’s a huge difference between “nanotech armor” and “nanomanufactured armor”, the sort of technology we’re looking at here at Lifeboat. Nanomanufactured armor will be made of diamond or fullerenes, and lack any structural flaws, making it many times more durable than anything we have today, whether we like to call it “nanotech” or not.

Over at Accelerating Future, a new interview between Michael Anissimov (a.k.a. me), and Dr. Alan Goldstein, a member of our Scientific Advisory Board who is concerned about the dangers of bionanotechnology. Here is an excerpt from the first part of the interview:

Michael Anissimov: How do you define synthetic biology (A-life)?

Dr. Alan Goldstein: It is crucial to this discussion that people recognize that Synthetic Biology is not the same as Artificial Life. I have spent a great deal of time trying to explain the difference in terms that are understandable to non-technical folks.

It is much more useful, I suggest, to think in terms of life forms:

1. Natural Biological Life forms are those created by evolution without any form of molecular manipulation by Homo sapiens.

2. Recombinant DNA-based biological life forms are still natural insofar as they only use nature’s tools to mix and match biological components, albeit at a much faster rate than can be achieved by evolution. This would include cell biology methods like somatic nuclear transfer and stem cell technology.

3. Synthetic Biology involves the same molecules used to create natural and recombinant DNA-based life forms, but the molecules themselves (DNA, RNA, proteins, the bounding membrane of the synthetic cell, etc.) are made in the laboratory de novo (i.e. from their monomeric precursors).

4. Finally, Nonbiological Life involves the introduction of molecules that have not previously been involved as essential components of living systems here on earth. We need to be very specific here because many ‘esoteric’ elements (e.g. manganese and zinc) are essential co-factors in biological enzymes. Therefore Nonbiological Life (Animats) must be clearly defined as having significant functional units (e.g. molecules) fabricated from nonbiological materials.

The purpose of the Animat Test as presented in the article “I, Nanobot” is to provide an operational method for determining when the human race breaks the Carbon Barrier ™ and creates the first nonbiological life form. I have termed such a life form an Animat (short for Anima materials).

Check out the whole thing. Dr. Goldstein really is a pioneer in a world where scientists would rather keep quiet than alert the public about the serious risks inherent in the technology they are developing.

On Edge.org, 160 brilliant scientists and thinkers were asked, “what are you optimistic about?” Gregory Cochran, a professor of anthropology at the University of Utah, chose to speak about self-replicating manufacturing:

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”—it has always been that way.

Most men have been slaves of necessity, while the few who were not lived by exploiting others who were. Although mechanization has eased that burden in the advanced countries, it is still the case for the majority of the human race. Limited resources (mainly fossil fuels), as well as negative consequences of industrialization such as global warming, have made some people question whether American living standards can ever be extended to most of the human race. They’re pessimists, and they’re wrong.

Hardly anyone seems to realize it, but we’re on the threshold of an era of unbelievable abundance. Within a generation—sooner if we want it enough—we will be able to make a self-replicating machine, first seriously suggested by John von Neumann.

Read the rest here. What Cochran slightly misses is that making unlimited weapons is just as easy as making unlimited products using exponential manufacturing. Read my essay on first-stage nanoproducts and nanoweaponry, the type we’d start to see in less than a year if von Neumann’s machines started working.