starship-design: Fwd: Nanotech in WPost

[KellySt@aol.com]

FYI



In a message dated 3/21/02 4:02:27 PM, dtaylor611@comcast.net writes:

>Lads,
>Here's more major newsprint on nanotech from today's Washington Post. 
>I
>just copied and pasted here, shortish article.
>Don


                 Letter From Silicon Valley
Big Potential From Small Things

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Thursday, March 21, 2002; Page E01

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- The next big
thing to come out of this birthplace of high tech
could be small:

Think tiny molecular delivery devices for
medicines.

Or "smart" dust that can monitor people
without being detected.

Maybe supercomputers the size of grains of
salt.

The mind-bending ideas seem straight out of
works of science fiction, but some out here
think they may be possible in the near future as
interest grows in something called
nanotechnology.

Literally the manipulation of atoms or
molecules, nanotechnology is a sort of
"superscience" that encompasses everything
from computing and materials science to health
care. Its goal is to figure out a way to
reconfigure the tiny particles to create things
Mother Nature never imagined.

Just a few years ago, nanotechnology was on the fringe
of respected science, and skeptics still
abound. But venture capital bigwigs are beginning to
bet on the science, and real research is underway
at the NASA Ames Research Center here. Even Washington
is beginning to take notice after a series
of breakthroughs.

"The debate has shifted from 'Will it happen?' to 'When
will it happen?' " said Christine Peterson,
president of the Foresight Institute, a research
institute dedicated to nanotechnology.

Indeed, the prestigious journal Science noted that the
demonstration of a nanoscale computer circuit
by industry and academic researchers was 2001's
"breakthrough of the year," surpassing even the
completion of the mapping of the human genome.

Major high-tech corporations including IBM,
Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and Raytheon have
launched nanotechnology initiatives, but these giants
by no means have a monopoly on the research.

Steve Jurvetson, a venture capitalist with Draper
Fisher Jurvetson, said his firm has invested $40
million over the past two years in 12 upstart
nanotechnology and related ventures. Much of the funding
has gone to those working on shrinking electronics, but
he's personally interested in companies that
research mechanical-biological hybrids, such as those
using a hemoglobin-like substance to make
dense computer chips.

"All the great unknowns of science revolve around
nanotech in many ways," said Jurvetson, who has
three pictures of atoms on a wall of his office in
Redwood City and uses words such as "magic" and
"mystery" to describe the field.

The Bush administration has become so interested in the
potential of the field that it has earmarked
$604 million this year for nanotechnology research and
development. That's up 43 percent from the
2001 budget. In one of the government's biggest public
displays of its faith in the technology, the
Pentagon recently announced that it would spend $50
million over the next five years to create a new
laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
to focus on creating nanotech gear for
soldiers.

The research is increasingly important here in the
heart of the high-tech world because companies are
reaching the limit of how small they can make silicon
chips. Without miniaturization, some say, the
technology revolution could be stalled, and
next-generation devices such as "chemistry labs on chips"
-- capable of instantly analyzing soil samples or rocks
on other planets -- would never be built.

For NASA, making things smaller and lighter is
important because of how much it costs to carry stuff
into space.

Meyya Meyyappan, who oversees about 60 scientists on
NASA's nanotech team at the Ames
Research Center, said his ultimate goal is to build
what he calls a "thinking spacecraft" -- one with
enough computing power on board so it can "make
autonomous decisions so we don't need to control
everything from Houston."

That's critical for a successful manned mission to
Mars. It costs $100,000 per pound to get something
there, meaning that carrying a Cray computer is out of
the question. And it's impractical to try to relay
computations from Earth to Mars because it takes the
signal 20 minutes to get from one point to
another, and 20 minutes to get a response back.

"If we don't make things smaller," Meyyappan said, "we
won't be able to go on any new missions."

The recent breakthroughs in nanotechnology have also
prompted worries from many prominent
scientists, such as Sun Microsystems' Bill Joy. They
compare it to atomic research in the 1950s and
today's mammal-cloning efforts. They point to nightmare
scenarios such as the one in Kurt Vonnegut's
1963 novel "Cat's Cradle." The story's scientist had
discovered a way to stack up water molecules to
make ice solid at room temperature. But the molecules
somehow get loose and end up freezing the
world's oceans.

NASA's Meyyappan calls this the "scary part" of the
science but dismisses it as nothing more than a
"Hollywood story."

"Pretty much everything man has made since the dawn of
civilization he has been able to control," he
said.



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