Development Of Space Colonies, Ideas on the potential of colonies

I've started this thread (after much delay) on how space colonies based around nanotechnology would develop after establishment.

This topic is influenced by the thread titled 'seeding the galaxy' started by N O M.

http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=13895&st=315

Let the pooling of ideas begin

I like the ideas that Peter F Hamilton has on this in the The Night.'s Dawn Trilogy. He suggests using a mixture of nanotech and biotech to grow giant space habitats. These habitats build themselves, just like living organisms do, by eating asteroid rock.

That sounds like a right good idea. An I get the feelin that it ain't too far off o what we can do now...
Can ya imagine the coursework an engineer on such a space station would have to do to be qualified fer that job? It gives the phrase "Genetic Engineer" a new meanin...

They know for some reason, fire ants in Texas, love computer boarded, out in the desert switching relay boxes.
They swarm in these boxes and seem to have a socialization once in the active box, all of their own.
Nanotechnology swarms of bots, are different. They can be more complex than an insect and might have the ability to not only adapt, but evolve within their surroundings.
It’s the let go Heisenberg equation, that concerns these swarms of robots.
It might be, that you would release the raw materials to build these habitats, however when the astronauts would land, everything would seem alright for the first night, or day or so, then those same bots, might have adapted, to where they may even consume the astronauts?
There is not enough feedback on them at this point in time.

Self reproducing nano-bots are a really bad idea, if you've read a science fiction book lately, you'd know why. Artificial life is just as suceptible to evolution as we are, it only takes a few missed transistors on a chip to mistake carbon for iron and get the nanobots to eat people.

And without self-reproduction, getting suficiently large quantities of them would be a problem.

However, in construction, there is no need for autonomous machines. You could simply have molecular construction machines, controlled by the proverbial levers and switches. You could fabricate diamond/buckyball/nanotube plating from common spacerock with machine A and fashion them together with machine B. You wouldn't even need people to work the machines, but there would be a big red stop button, which you won't have on nanobots. A macromachine, with nanotech abilities would be a far better idea.

So, now that you have free materials, you still need to get your carbon from somewhere. Earth would be a good target, it would even help that global warming a bit, but preferably, you want to get your materials elsewhere. Asteroids sound nice, but contain very little carbon, mostly silicon, which is a crappy construction material, and iron, which is just as crappy without more carbon. Besides, asteroids are hard to catch.

So, the key to developing your space colony would be getting carbon, as it's basically the prefered building material when you've got nanotechnology.

No need for self reproduction.

It would indeed be a stupid idea to attach disassemblers to the same machines that do the manufacturing, then allowing them the ability to build themselves. But this isn't necessary to produce large numbers of nanobots. All that is needed is a large number of specialised nanofactories designed to produce a limited set of nanobots. These nanofactories are themselves built by other specialised nanofactories, with zero tolerance allowed for errors when building these so that machine evolution isn't allowed. Monitoring systems in the nanofactories would identify nanobots with errors and destroy them, bots could also identify when they are malfunctioning and present for dissasembly. These aren't living things with a survival instinct, or feelings.

Carbon is good when building nanomachines to do nano things, or for very high strength. But construction won't all be done at the nano level. Materials we use today will still have their uses with nanotech. Steel and glass will still be used in construction. Aluminium is pretty common, so why not use sapphire? So I'd expect that only a small percentage of a space colony to be built out of carbon.

Dearest Nom'

I'm not trying to be funny, but is there a known study, to where a model self imbued nanocoloney has been started, then a drug similar to dylesergic acid has been given to that colony?

Pardon me?

A test point to note, is that web weaving spiders, have been given LSD, which did affect their output of behavior.
Would the same substance, also affect nanotechnology bots?

Your thinking is clearly freaky, phillip347.

Ah, right, that's an even better idea. It's worked for ants, why not for us as well.

Why not use carbon? We have loads of it here on earth, which is readily available everywhere, unlike steel, for which you need iron. If you can seamlessly manufacture from the molecule (EDIT: atom) up, you might as well use diamond instead of glass. It's clearer, doesn't shatter, doesn't scratch and can be used as a load-bearing element.

With diamond and nanotubes, you could build basically the whole spacestation superstructure. Why settle for less, when you have excellent building materials floating in the air, where we'd rather not have them?

This post has been edited by Alcari on Jun 25 2008, 01:14 AM

This is something that interests me also. Ant intelligence is fascinating. It has (IMO) a statistical approach to organisation.

I'm wondering if there might be a mathematical algorithm or something of that nature (My maths is awful) that could be understood and applied to nanobots, that enables them to organise in a very natural way or 'ant-like'

Here is (IMO) a very good summary of ant behavior:

Deborah Gordon: How do ants know what to do?

The nanobots must reproduce, due to attriction of damaged ones, in the line of their duties.

The point being discussed, philip82, is that anyone who designs a nanobot capable of self reproduction is a complete idiot.

Nanobot reproduction is far off, but a reality. N.O.M., the idea isn't that stupid.