I had read Silent Spring before the first Earth Day (now 39 years ago), and I recall telling my classmates that it seemed like a bad idea to spread persistent poisons all over the landscape of a finite world. I was 14, living in a small college town in Oregon.
I read The Limits to Growth soon after its publication early in 1972. It made a big impression on me. The authors used system dynamics models with broad, aggregate variables like population, economic growth, natural resources, and pollution to explore the outlines of a range of future scenarios. The scenarios without strict controls on growth all came to a bad end. Some of those scenarios resemble the world we’re in today.
The book scared me and helped crystallize my resolve to work toward a future outside the range of those scenarios — not toward an impossible future of unlimited exponential growth, but toward a future in which Earth’s forests and seas would be compatible with a prosperous human race for centuries to come. I was, and am, persuaded that this will require a profound change in the basis of our industrial civilization. This aim set the course of my life.
The High Frontier
When I left Oregon for MIT in 1973, NASA was promising that a “Space Shuttle” would bring an era of low-cost, high-volume space transportation. With the abundant solar power, material resources, and machine-friendly environment of space, it was clear that the world beyond Earth could support a growing industrial base — one that spread life, rather than destroying it, lifting the burden of heavy industry from the biosphere.
For several years, it even seemed that this might be practical. The work at the time centered on exploratory design and analysis of potential hardware and systems, with a willingness to contemplate projects ranging from the lab level to the scale of the Apollo program. There were NASA-sponsored summer studies at Stanford and the NASA Ames Research Center, journal articles, industry studies, and academic conferences. There was even a Foresight-like group frothing with enthusiasts and running conferences that drew sober engineers. All this was exciting and promising until it became clear that inadequate launch vehicles had nailed a ceiling on the sky that would stay in place for a generation or more.
The Molecular Frontier
By the time I finished my undergraduate studies, though, I had recognized what soon seemed to me to be obvious, once pointed out: that the productive molecular machinery of life could be used to build artificial molecular machine systems, and that these could be used to build others, and so on, climbing a ladder of molecular technologies that leads to system limited by physical law, and not by the history of living cells, DNA, and salt water.
This line of development seemed compelling and, whether research was guided by a long-range vision or not, it seemed (and seems) inevitable. After each incremental advance, further advances would (and have) become accessible and attractive.
The physics-based numbers said that this line of development would lead to productive capabilities far beyond what conventional technologies could achieve, and could satisfy human material needs by means far more sustainable and compatible with Earth’s life.
I found this persuasive when I worked out the basics in 1977, and more so after the scientific work published in 1981 and 1992. Since then, the technology base has advanced, paths forward have come into clearer focus, and physics-based analysis has (perhaps surprisingly) deepened understanding of a small but significant portion of what will be enabled by fabrication capabilities well beyond those we have today.
Looking forward
These capabilities would be enough to resolve the growing world crisis. The fundamental knowledge is in place. The institutional framework for effective progress is not.
In particular, we lack what the aerospace world has in abundance: Vigorous exploratory design and analysis of potential hardware and systems, and a willingness to contemplate projects ranging from the lab level to the scale of the Apollo program. The reasons for this are understandable, involving both a peculiar history steeped in misconceptions and basic differences between disciplinary cultures. Molecular scientists aren’t aerospace engineers, nor are they experimental particle physicists. The nature of their work leads them to think and organize along qualitatively different lines.
Physicists experienced in exploratory design, engineering analysis, program planning, and institution building, please take note. There are opportunities in molecular systems engineering with the potential to solve problems on a planetary scale, and the science is more ready than it might seem.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
“All this was exciting and promising until it became clear that inadequate launch vehicles had nailed a ceiling on the sky that would stay in place for a generation or more.”
Eric, aren’t you worried that your emphasis on a protein pathway to molecular manufacturing, and your explicit criticism of present-day diamondoid research, might have the same effect on high-performance molecular manufacturing systems?
Suppose someone developed a system that could build protein-like structures at $1,000 per gram (~1 atto-cent per atom). This would revolutionize computers and medicine. You couldn’t do aerospace – maybe not even avionics – and energy would be problematic, as would most consumer products.
It would surely attract funding by the ton, and molecular manufacturing researchers en masse… and might draw enough attention away from covalent solids to delay large-scale product development (including fast inexpensive nanofactories) by years or even a decade.
Five years ago, focusing on protein may have been politically necessary. I’m not sure it is necessary anymore. And it may be wise to remind people that a protein-based system, while impressive by today’s standards, will represent only a fraction of the capability of covalent solid systems that can place an atom for 10 yoctocents, and aren’t limited in speed by fluid drag, much less (ugh) diffusion, and have strength and stiffness derived from dense covalent bonds (what is that, an order of magnitude better than protein? Two?)
Chris
Chris, these cases aren’t really analogous. Biomolecular systems can be used to fabricate advanced-material systems, but high-cost launch vehicles are of no use in fabricating low-cost launch vehicles. There are rapidly advancing technologies for atomically precise design and fabrication of intricate, self-assembling biomolecular systems containing thousands to millions of atoms, and this is enormous progress along a line of development that I have supported and contributed to since 1981. In addition to having immediate scientific and practical value, this research will provide a technology platform for further developments, including the integration of inorganic components to build modular molecular composite nanosystems, and of early-generation productive nanosystems, as discussed in the 2007 technology roadmap.
There’s interesting science to be done in a host of other areas, some of which will have practical applications that cannot be predicted today. Regarding manipulation of strong covalent solids, a good, ground-breaking example is of course Philip Moriarty’s EPSRC-funded experimental program on scanning probe-driven mechanosynthesis reactions.
I was confused by your reference to “Silent Spring”. Hasn’t that book had the unintended consequence of 10 million unnecessary child deaths due to malaria?
You say “The institutional framework for effective progress is not [in place].” What would such an institutional framework look like? You imply that it would have to cross or break down ” basic differences between disciplinary cultures.” Do you envision this happening at the level of universities, national laboratories, or industries?
@ James Eastwood — What’s been missing is a framework that supports an engineering process like the ones we see in (for example) space systems engineering and fusion energy research. This means a balance of conceptual design and analysis, scientific research, component development, and system integration. It begins with the identification of apparently achievable objectives, then advances by progressive task breakdown, experimental investigation, design revision, and so forth.
I became very familiar with this sort of development process in my space systems work, and there is nothing like it in molecular systems engineering. That must change.
As we see in other fields of science-intensive technology development, there are roles for all the sectors that you mention — universities, national laboratories, and industries.
@ caveat bettor — I’m only reporting what I read and how I reacted almost 40 years ago.
Got it. Neither the mind nor the heart is static (and who’d want it that way?).
I think that there is an industrial bias away from some of the promising areas of molecular engineering. For instance, I was in Cornell’s School of Engineering, and saw that the Materials Science department was quite active in research, but with a narrow bent towards semiconductors.