When do you think Humans will start colonizing other planets?

[OzzyKP]

Well if nothing else, y'all can start plotting out where you want to build your house:

http://www.google.com/mars/

[MrFun]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs


You've never stepped foot in the OT before, have you?

Didn't we all start out as naive n00bs?

[_BuRjaCi_]

Originally posted by Sandman


A 'nano-pressurized water tank' is a grossly inefficient engineering solution, not to mention complicated as hell and functionally useless - the nanobots need to exist within liquid water to function, not carry it with them.

Could you outline how your 'canister' scenario will work in more detail? Would the canister contain a wind turbine or solar panel to power the nanomachines, or just a supply of chemical energy? How would the nanobots move in the absence of liquid and in freezing temperatures?

The nano-presurized tank is indeed a siliy idea, but where are you coming from, I mean why would a nanobot need water to move. And the real power behind nanobots isn't their size that allows them to manipulate atoms and moleculs ( wich is great ), but their ability to reproduce and work together with very little "on-board" computing power ( think ants, each one isn't smart, but thogether they exibith some fascinating behaviour ). I can imagine a less plasuible scenario in wich robots that are capabale of reproduction are dropend on Mars and, well replicate for a few centuries , building all they need and when there's a few milion of them, the order comes from Earth to build what we want them to build. I takes longer but ilustrates the strenghts of nanobots. The canister of wich you refer to would probably have an onboard fission or fussion reactor (keeping the bots runing for a few decades ) and labs on board capable of making energy rich molecules from elements already present on Mars. The nanobots would bring the labs these elements and preform matinance in exchange they would get the molecules they need to function. After there are enough of them they would start building solar cells, wind turbines,energy storage facilities ( if they needed to work at night ) to replace the reactor in a few decades ( when it runs out of fuel ). They would also build new "factories" that produce these molecules or new nanobots ( faster than they can reproduce themselves, if it was needed ). A nanobot that ran "out of fuel" would deactivate, until another nanobot would bring it energy via new energy rich molecules or if the molecules could be reasembled within the bot, with electrical energy ( like rechargable batteries- but that's much harder to do efficently). And when the population would be large enough the bots could mine for uranium (for fission, if there is any U on Mars ) or deuterium ( an isotop of H ) and lithium for fusion reactor fuel. And posibly even build new ones ( fusion reactors ).

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Well if nothing else, y'all can start plotting out where you want to build your house:

http://www.google.com/mars/

Definitely on Mars' little caribbean, west of Olympus Mons. It's close to the equator, and thus the climate will be the most pleasant. And once we fill Mars with water, it'll make an excellent place with ski and sea nearby

[Vince278]

I got dibs on the Cydonia region.

[Sandman]

Originally posted by _BuRjaCi_


The nano-presurized tank is indeed a siliy idea, but where are you coming from, I mean why would a nanobot need water to move. And the real power behind nanobots isn't their size that allows them to manipulate atoms and moleculs ( wich is great ), but their ability to reproduce and work together with very little "on-board" computing power ( think ants, each one isn't smart, but thogether they exibith some fascinating behaviour ). I can imagine a less plasuible scenario in wich robots that are capabale of reproduction are dropend on Mars and, well replicate for a few centuries , building all they need and when there's a few milion of them, the order comes from Earth to build what we want them to build. I takes longer but ilustrates the strenghts of nanobots. The canister of wich you refer to would probably have an onboard fission or fussion reactor (keeping the bots runing for a few decades ) and labs on board capable of making energy rich molecules from elements already present on Mars. The nanobots would bring the labs these elements and preform matinance in exchange they would get the molecules they need to function. After there are enough of them they would start building solar cells, wind turbines,energy storage facilities ( if they needed to work at night ) to replace the reactor in a few decades ( when it runs out of fuel ). They would also build new "factories" that produce these molecules or new nanobots ( faster than they can reproduce themselves, if it was needed ). A nanobot that ran "out of fuel" would deactivate, until another nanobot would bring it energy via new energy rich molecules or if the molecules could be reasembled within the bot, with electrical energy ( like rechargable batteries- but that's much harder to do efficently). And when the population would be large enough the bots could mine for uranium (for fission, if there is any U on Mars ) or deuterium ( an isotop of H ) and lithium for fusion reactor fuel. And posibly even build new ones ( fusion reactors ).

I'm unconvinced that what you outline is chemically, physically or computationally possible. Water is a vital factor for all known self-replicators, and there are plenty of chemists who think it's impossible for self-replication to take place without it.

A heavily distributed network like the one you describe - how much computing power will that have? It's like creating a computer composed of ten million wristwatches, or a vertebrate with brain cells evenly distributed across its whole body. Brutally inefficient, if durable.

The scenarios you describe strike me as fantastical. An nanobot which has run out of fuel being tended to by another? Mining uranium fuel or building operational fusion reactors? No way.

[_BuRjaCi_]

Originally posted by Sandman


I'm unconvinced that what you outline is chemically, physically or computationally possible. Water is a vital factor for all known self-replicators, and there are plenty of chemists who think it's impossible for self-replication to take place without it.

A heavily distributed network like the one you describe - how much computing power will that have? It's like creating a computer composed of ten million wristwatches, or a vertebrate with brain cells evenly distributed across its whole body. Brutally inefficient, if durable.

The scenarios you describe strike me as fantastical. An nanobot which has run out of fuel being tended to by another? Mining uranium fuel or building operational fusion reactors? No way.

1.) Listen self-replication is possible without water. Macro robots will be able to do it in a few decades
(currently, simple experimental robots are half-way there). Nano self-replication, well that may be computationaly, physically and chemicaly imposible as you have so elequently put it. But why would a nanobot have to build another one just like it? Is it so hard to imagine a few specilaised nanobots working together to make other nanobots. And to take inspiration from the natural world, why not linke them together into a "queen" ( like ants,termites and molerats ), very small, but possibly not "nano",a "nanobot factory" specilising in nothing else but replication, tended by the "drones".

Or if that is to much, take a simple scheme nanobots build factory, factory build nanobots ( I already mentioned that in the post you are commenting ).

2.) It has been proven (for organic chemistry) that it is possible to make ANY molecule (any molecule that is feasable by the limits of natural laws), from the atomic level up. It is only a step from there (a technologicaly chalenging step but never the less an easily imaginable one) to , since everything is made of molecules and with the right technology, "replicate" or "fix" anything. From a perfect copy of a renesance masterpice to, yes even a fusion reactor. That's why nanobots have great potential in medicine.
You are only limited by 3 things :

- the tools to manipulate singular atoms (curentley
none useful for the applications stated here)

- energy (described before)

- atoms available in the enviroment
(the "mining" that I refer to)

(nanorobotics is NOT a religion as you claim, since then I would be claming that nanobots can turn led into gold, wich they can not, as only stars do that- but stars are just natures fusion reactors)

3.) Nanobots wouldn't have a "massive ineficient" pseudo-neural net (similar in concept to the neural grid of some simple multi-cell organisms) as you seem to have understood me. If you chech my previous posts you will see I mention a certain AI being envolved. I just said a few nanobots would be able to pool their "digital watch" (as you put it) computing powers for cooperation (they would need to be able to comunicate with the leading AI, and recive tasks to do alone or in groups of various sizes).

4.) "A nanobot tending to another" .... how is that hard to do? Just script the bot to bring X of Y molecules to the bot and activate it. You seem to forget that the absence of life to decompose the bot means the bot could last quite a while in "sleep mode".

5.) I was refering to Mars outposts being posible by the end of the 21'st century. This level of nanotech will be aviable by 2200 not 2020. I was rushed in my first posts and didn't explain that, but it's quite clear from the vision I described of a sublight nanotech civilisation colonising the galaxy (we are tousands if not milions of years from that ).

[Vince278]

Originally posted by _BuRjaCi_
(nanorobotics is NOT a religion as you claim, since then I would be claming that nanobots can turn led into gold, wich they can not, as only stars do that- but stars are just natures fusion reactors)

A star's fusion reactor can only produce up to iron. Other forces are involved in going past that.

[niDe]

Like magic?

[niDe]

Oh the wit, oh yea

[Vince278]

Originally posted by niDe
Like magic?

Look it up. Here's an opportunity for you to learn something whenever you feel you're ready.

[niDe]

can't say I care much for the forces in a fusion reactor

[Eli]

There's gotta be something up there that's worth the effort. Races between nations are not going to do more that Apollo style stunts.

Only when opportunities for profit appear will really efficient and large scale projects start to be developed and built, not a moment sooner.

It's already happenning with tourism. Hopefully more options will appear soon.

[Az]

But what if the chances of a return for the investment are small? ( i.e. it's possible to create a self-sufficient colony, and maybe even a very prolific one, but it's not going to be able to pay back to mother earth) does that mean that we shouldn't do it?

bull****, I say. Just like kids shouldn't be had only as means of them working in fields, so humans shouldn't expand only when driven by profit.

[Eli]

I didnt say "should", I said "would". With governments this is just not going to happen. You'll have, at most, little Antarctica style research stations on the Moon, Mars and maybe some big asteroid and even this will take decades to achieve.

An effort on the scale of the colonization of the Americas will always be too expensive and politically dangerous for governments. It will have to be done privately when a big enough incentive appears.

And i'm sure that if it is possible to create self-sufficient colonies, it will be quickly done by people wanting either to get away from Earth or out of a million other motives.