The New Sliced Bread

Ever wanted to be invincible? Ever wanted a car that would recognise that some of its parts were wearing down, and would repair itself? How about hair that you never had to cut, because miniture machines reacting as part of a network with billions of nodes cut it for you.

Nanotechnology is finding its first real project. NASA wants to find a way that will protect its ships from impacts in space. It has the money and the will, so I'm really looking forward to this coming to frutition. Once the science is worked out - I don't see how things could stop, all of my utopian dreams in the previous paragraph should be realised. As NASA is trying to produce Ageless Aerospace Vehicles whos mechanical nanomachines detect and remedy problems, I don't see why biological machines could not also be developed. They could be the perfect anti-oxidisers, for example. They could take away scar tissue, and direct stem cells to where they are needed. Fantastic!*

The best part is, we will not have to wait decades to see the effects of the intial applications of these new technologies. If my interpretation if Sept 10th's New Scientist is correct, NASA and is already attempting incorporate the technology into the next shuttle flight. It seems that the agency wants to coat the shuttle in a layer of interconnected sensors and processors, that will collectively indicate that there is a problem.

The system works by having interdependent cell-like nodes of the network. It takes inspiration from the network that ants use to tell each other which way food is. Ants can only use scents to communicate with nearby ants, but eventually the signal gets to a sufficent number of ants in order to do something productive with the information. Likewise, wo one cell is responsibile for processing and acting on the information on the NASA shutle system. Therefore, an impact that fails to destroy the entire ship should not be sufficent to destroy the network. And, because the shuttle is mainly worried about microimpacts, there should never be a complete breakdown of the network.

Initially, this system is purely diagnostic. As I understand it, the network tells a central computer that there's a problem that needs fixing, which allows astronauts to fix it. But the next step will be to form a network that is also self repairing. The nanomachines should, in principle, be able to transfer metals from one part of the ship to the weakened area. In the case of minor impacts, this means remoulding the dent that was caused, but in larger impacts, metal could be moved from a central store, etc.

Once the repair stage has succeeded, I cannot think of anything that would not benefit from nanomachines. As soon as a company buys nanomachines to look after a particular piece of equipment, that equipment will run perfectly forever.

*All of this is pure speculation on my part of course. You'll have to talk to a scientist about the practical potential of nanotechnology within the next 100 years or so.