[extropy-chat] Smalley, Drexler and the monster in Lake Michigan

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003, Eugen Leitl wrote:

> Counting atoms is a useless metric. You can't make strained caged compounds
> of this complexity. The yield is not only close to zero, the yield is
> precisely zero.

Hmmmm....  If that were true then one should not be able to make
buckyballs or buckytubes (as I believe they have strained bonds).
Cubane is perhaps the ultimate example and it is produced using
chemical synthesis.

I did not say that one would have a high yield -- since some
parts of nanotech development may be a bootstrapping process
you may only need one copy of something.

A related question -- do you know of a program/utility that
can show the degree of bond strain?

Robert