I wonder if a major requirement will be to retro-fit existing structures, rather than do "green field" construction (on Earth, anyway).

So, what you would be interested in then, would be to produce a lining for an existing house, which would hopefully be structurally sound. And have this fit in a minimal size; for other discussions on "Nanotech House in a Suitcase" see:

http://groups.google.com/groups?group=sci.nanotech&q=house

Also of interest, though not part of the basic idea, would be to provide a way to hook up to utilities, and provide suitable resources to make the place liveable, and even comfortable.

So, as an extension to the "new home" idea, how about a "home renovation" suitcase, which can be used in almost any existing structure?

As a refinement it would return to the suitcase form, leaving the original structure with minimal changes.

Another important consideration is the environmental impact you are prepared to cause, and whether utilities like a molecular conveyor "pipeline" are available. There is a lot to be said for making the base materials required man-portable, though a power line, and maybe somewhere to dump generated heat, will probably be required.

That might imply a, say, super-conducting refrigerant utility, so you can control what heats up where, might be a good utility investment for the future! [grin]

There are probably good reasons to make nanotech as "modular" as possible, so we can figure out and keep track of what is going on.

Maybe, like the arguments for using RISC rather than CISC processors, less complex interactions, so even though the performance is not quite so optimised, it is a lot easier to get it to work.

See the history of the ARM, as opposed to the fun and games Intel have had with the x86.

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Copyright © 2004 Rory McLean