Rapid Prototyping--Next Step Nano-assemblers

The Omnitir Blog is one of the better future/tech blogs around. Omnitir has posted an interesting article about rapid prototyping, a way of "printing" 3-dimensional objects to produce almost instant prototypes of a part or machine. It seems the skunk works at Lockheed has "printed" most of an unmanned spy plane, for testing.

With rapid prototyping, an engineer/designer can take parts of a machine from the computer to the real world very quickly. Just like an ordinary printer prints a binary file to produce a document, a rapid prototyper "prints" a binary file representing a 3-D object to produce a prototype of that object. The skunk works engineers supposedly printed all of the airframe of the spy-drone using rapid prototyping.

Here is more from the New Scientist article linked by Omnitir:

"The entire Polecat airframe was constructed using low-cost rapid prototyping materials and methods," says Frank Mauro, director of UAV systems at the Skunk Works.

"The big advantage over conventional, large-scale aircraft production programmes is the cost saving in tooling as well as the order-of-magnitude reductions in fabrication and assembly time."

By mixing composite polymers with radar-absorbing metals, it is thought that the aircraft can be built with a certain amount of stealth characteristics already built in.

The flexibility lent by 3D printing allowed Mauro's team to design and build the Polecat in only 18 months. "Today's sophisticated UAVs are approaching the cost of equivalent manned aircraft. Polecat's approach is a way to break this trend and demonstrate affordable UAV systems that can be rapidly developed," says Mauro.

It is easier to see how Drexler's nano-assemblers might affect industrial and military projects, by seeing the effect of rapid prototyping. As nanotechnology is built into rapid proto-typing, molecular assembly could easily sneak up on society unawares.

The dangers are not necessarily from the technology, as from the dysfunctional ideologies circulating within society, that might use the technology for the wrong purpose. The laws of economics will not disappear overnight, the moment nanotechnology achieves molecular level assembly. The lack of understanding of economics by the leaders and bureaucrats of most countries is a greater threat to the world than any technology.