That way no harpooning is involved. If NASA laid claim to the next whale that washes up on the shores (or develops technology to locate deceased whales at sea – which is likely cheaper than mimicking whale oil itself) the oil in that whale would probably be enough to keep them supplied for many years.

They could then claim publicly that no whales were killed to obtain the oil. The greenies are happy, NASA is happy and myself (a NASA loving scientist greenie) am very happy! :-)

This post was mentioned on Twitter by labyrinthman: Strangest data loss / retention story: http://bit.ly/cVNKoN NASA had to overwrite master tapes in the 80s because of /whale oil/ shortage…

Babies, too, of course.

Programmable molecular machine systems are in use already in biotechnology. Those machines can be imitated, and have already been re-engineered to some extent. The direction of advance from here is toward more complex structures, more advanced materials, and more diverse products. I see reason to expect accelerating progress toward products of extraordinary performance and diversity, but I see no reason to expect an identifiable “first molecular manufacturing device”, or an identifiable “first product”.

I think to prove (and utilized) the power molecular manufacturing, a useful product must be produced by a MM device that has certain advantages over other manufacturing methods.

I’m curious…?

1) What kind of novel product do you think will be produced by the first molecular manufacturing device?

2) Is it likely that this product (produced by very early MM devices) will be very powerful compared to what we have today ?

3) Do you think it would be able to be commercialised short time after its development?

Thanks

Thomas

P.S. I don’t quite get NASA’s decision to re-use the old tapes that contained important old data, do they not care about those data….if so why did they tape it in the first place…