Question About Nanites
Soul_Rider
Mod Bean Join Date: 2004-06-19 Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
Mod Bean Join Date: 2004-06-19 Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
<div class="IPBDescription">Are they natural or man made?</div> Nanites are the universal be all and end all for anything you want to do in NS. They are used for res, are used in med pack to heal, used to make armour, bullets, guns, they do everything. The thing i want to know is are they a naturally occuring resource? that needs to be resupplied every time a ship docks, or are they man made, and just continously manufactured onboard a ship. The main thrust of this questioning is to find out, can a ship ever run out of nanites?
Comments
So on the order of 50-100 years... Mind you I'm pulling all of this out of my ****.
Jeff could give you a real answer, but I don't know if you can reach him...
I dont think they would run out, no... since they recycle all waste material.
But there is of course the constant detoriation in vacuum, with atoms "boiling off into the void". So eventually, yes.
(this is not counting if the ship ever docks)
Personally, I think 10 years is a bit much.
In Asia, they'll prolly have it within 5 years or so, while the western world will struggle with legal and moral problems
And btw, if you're cruising around in space for such a vast time, you're bound to stumble upon a C-class asteroid, from which you can extract most material needed for the manufacture of nanites
Well... I don't think it's possible to create nanites from aliens, and from most asteroids, you won't be able to either.
What I'm saying is that nanites are most probably based on metal or plastics, not coal, (which I suspect the aliens are... could be chisel as well, but that's not very probable seeing to it as the aliens are quite advanced) and therefore the raw materials needed for the manufacture of nanites cannot be extracted from dead aliens. (although they will be able to extract materials needed for the restocking of their fluids, adrenaline etc)
Actually, nanotech <b>has already</b> become a billion-plus dollar industry. Just not the kind of self-replicating nanites you're thinking about; these days they're more used as structural materials.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Most ships or bases have carefully contained stores of "raw" nano-sludge, a mineral rich slop that can serve as the base material for any desired object. Nanotech assemblers are designed to accept this sludge, and this sludge only, as their fuel, and the building blocks for nano-construction. This helps limit the dangers of nanotech, and also allows the Trans-Govs to police its use (by controlling the nano-sludge supply). There are few greater crimes than the unsanctioned development or use of nanotech.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What I'm saying is that nanites are most probably based on metal or plastics, not coal, (which I suspect the aliens are... could be chisel as well, but that's not very probable seeing to it as the aliens are quite advanced) and therefore the raw materials needed for the manufacture of nanites cannot be extracted from dead aliens. (although they will be able to extract materials needed for the restocking of their fluids, adrenaline etc) <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Since, because of thier size, nanites could work with individual atoms, they should be able to break down aliens into the Carbon, Hydrogen, Ext or whatever they are made of, and then biuld that back up into more nanites.
Face it guys, nanites is the only answer you will ever need, in all eternity, amen.
While it would be theoretically possible to run out of atoms aboard a ship, that would also mean running out of: dust, vermin (yes, Khara comes into this category), metal shavings from wear, meteorit impact-pieces (som DO get through, though they are microscopic or atomic in size) and it would also mean that never once, in a million years, did the ship stop to take on water and food or crewers. Never once did it come upon a suitable asteroid (like someone mentioned earlier).
Im summing up here:
Nanites are robots so small they are measured in nanometers, they are capable of manufacturing things from the atomic level up, thus creating much more efficient machines, flawless in every respect, much sharper knives, unbreakable rope, etc. All they need to do this is atoms. If you have enough carbon atoms onboard ship, your nanites could build you the Koh-I-Noor (sp?), IF you had the "blueprint", that is.
Oh, I could go on and on...
Either you didn't read my text or you didn't follow.
Carbon, Hydrogen, Ext (what's ext?) and **** would't be a suiting building material of nanites
Why couldnt nanites be made from carbon and other atoms? Oil, plastics, fossile fuels of all types, and other things such as diamonds are all made of carbon and hydrogen. Other trace metals need would likely be found inside an alien corpse too.
Align is right that most likely bactirium would most likely get to alien corpses and use them before nanites could.
edit: seems we have stumbled onto while guns, bodies, and dead/destroyed buildings dissappear so fast.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Dropped weapons, like all litter and trash on government facilities and up-class stations, are recycled by the command network's dissembling nano's. The patterns of dissembled materials are normally stored in a buffer for a few hours, should they need to be recreated - that is, without nano-gridlock interfering. With gridlock, this basically means a dropped weapon, if it isn't picked up before being disassembled, is lost. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is why everything including corpses dissapears so quickly. The nano trash team cleans it up!!!
Not even nanobots are small enough to play with individual atoms, however. If they were, you could simply strip the electrons off a nucleus, adjust the number of neutrons and protons, add back some electrons, and make whatever you wanted from whatever you wanted. So if that were the case, you COULD make more nanobots from carbon.
However, like i said, nano-meter sized bots are not sufficiently small to work with a single atom. And it's not possible for them to be.
The idea behing this question was two-fold, one to get the answer i needed for my story, secondly, to find out how complete the nano-history is. Perhaps someone could write a nano-history for us, along the lines of gates, moon and stars, to show the development of nano-tech from today to c.2200?
That would give us a solid foundation to use for our stories.
The average size of an atom is around 130 picometers, so about .13 nano meters, and Nanotechnology deals with experimentation with objects that have dimensions of less than about 1,000 nanometers.
Idivudual atoms could probably used to biuld things out of, but the bots wouldnt be able to actual change the properties of the atoms.
<a href='http://www.natural-selection.org/manual/front_nanotech.html' target='_blank'>Official Nanotech Description</a>
Resources vents hold the base material that nanite construction converts into replicating and fixed nanites which are used to make buildings, weapons, healthpacks, etc.
Ratfire
Individual nanites form the one of two function nanite (replicating and fixed) items and when the composite item is "recycled" the nanites from the replicating section are "absorbed" into the command network system where individual replicating nanites are stored for later use, and individual fixed nanites break down and are destroyed.
Ratfire