Re: Nanotechnology "X Prize"

From: Rory McLean (rory_at_romsys.demon.co.uk)
Date: 10/18/04 

Date: 18 Oct 2004 16:11:16 GMT

In article <ckv41h01qeo@enews1.newsguy.com>, Jim Logajan
<URL:mailto:JamesL@lugoj.com> wrote:
>
> wallacethinmintr@eircom.net (Russell Wallace) wrote:
> > "Bootstrap Bill" <wrcousert@yahoo.com>wrote:
> >>Ok, how about a much more modest goal. Any machine that can replicate
> >>itself from raw materials regardless of size. Five year goal, $5
> >>million prize.
> >
> > We're a lot more than 5 years from that being possible (unless you're
> > willing to define complex components as raw materials, in which case
> > the result wouldn't be useful).
> >
> > If you're serious about trying to drum up funding for this, here's the
> > lesson I'd take from the X prize - they offered it for _suborbital_
> > flight, a reasonably attainable goal. I'd pick some equivalent in
> > nanotechnology, some small intermediate goal reasonably doable by a
> > team of a few smart people working hard for a couple of years.
>
> In my humble opinion, there are four things needed to accomplish MNT:
> tools, tools, tools, and good engineering.
>
> More precisely, tools as commodities with commodity pricing. That hasn't
> happened yet. Too many of the tools that are used are one-off, or were not
> designed for the uses to which they are put.
>
> Awards for the development of MNT-enabling commodity tools would be nice.

How close are we to being able to write the massively
distributed, hierarchically controlled software to drive an
assembler. With sufficient positional accuracy, and redundancy to
handle failed assembly heads, and higher level failures, is an
interesting question.

I wonder how much of this could be worked out using simulation,
ahead of time.

Should a prize for getting this working be considered?

Or, would this simply be considered one of the tools?

(I suspect some people would point to swarm computing, but I am
not at all clear this would deliver the required functionality.) 

-- 
Rory McLean
rory@romsys.demon.co.uk