From: Michael M. Butler (mmb@spies.com)
Date: Mon Jan 27 2003 - 14:21:33 MST
Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Jan 2003, Max M wrote:
>>Then later, when we can do fully virtual designs, we can design cheap
>>and efficient space travel.
>
>
> I don't know whether it is generally known, but my read of Eric Drexler's
> literature and development history is that cheap access to space was
> one primary reasons he pushed to develop nanotechnology.
My little contribution to the history question:
I think (based on a presentation of his I attended in Minneapolis back around
1985 or 1986) that Eric started thinking hard about nanotech as a result of
looking at what he called "lightsails" (extremely thin solar sails) and the
backing structures they'd need to have in order to stay stiff enough to be
generally useful--you might be able to make "aluminized nothing" for the sail
surface proper using bulk techniques such as vapor deposition on a surface you
then evaporate away, but how do you put an efficient truss structure behind that?
And if you can build those sorts of few-atomic-diameter-dimension trusses at the
level nearest the sail surface, what *else* can you build? Uh oh, suddenly he's
not pointed toward a PhD in astro/aero....
But that's my impression based on one presentation, and might have more to do
with the trajectory of his presentation than with his thinking's actual path.
MMB
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