[extropy-chat] Re: Why no assembler design? (forwarded from RB)

[Hal Finney]

Robert Bradbury sent me this, which he said he was unable to post to
the list, so I am forwarding it on his behalf:

> I'm annoyed as hell that I can't seem to figure out how to post this to
> the list
> (perhaps my alternate email address hasn't been approved yet).
>
> At any rate.
>
> Hal's points are pretty much correct with respect to (#2 and #3).  I
> wrote
> a paper discussing the problems in detail -- "Protein Based Assembly of
> Nanoscale Parts" which included a look at the both the design and cost
> problems (you may find this in the Google cache but not on the net until
>
> perhaps next week due to my access provider's ineptitude).
>
> And Hal is right that the cost (now) is too expensive.  Billions
> to Trillions by my estimates.  Too much for even DARPA to think
> about.  *But* those costs *will* come down.  My estimates at
> least for the wet path would put us in the 2015-2020 time frame.
>
> I think we could solve the complexity problem and that is in part what
> I am trying to do with Nano at Home.  It could also be solved with
> a few dozen people of the intelligence of Ralph and Eric confined
> with Ralph and Eric for a couple of years (R&E designed the fine
> motion controller in a couple of months -- one has to scale up the
> design of 2600 atoms to ~8 million atoms).  *But* I don't think
> that has a high probability of happening.
>
> There is very serious progress on the wet path -- at least tens of
> millions of dollars have been invested.  Most of the CEOs don't
> have an awareness of where their technologies are leading -- but
> that is simply an education problem that can easily be resolved
> in the future.
>
> Robert