March 2005
March 2005
Every so often, the idea of a replicator pops up. It's all the rage in Stargate and other Science Fiction stories; a complex manufacturing machine that can make all sorts of arbitrary things, including copies of itself. It has its basis in fact – you and I for example are biology's answer to the problem. We can be mass produced by unskilled labour. The idea appeals to NASA scientists; the machine that can build things, that is.
Anyway,
NASA realised long ago that it was cheaper to ship up factories to
make fuel for rockets on the moon, than it was to supply more than
experimental amounts from Earth. The monstrous 100 tonne robotic
Lunar
Manufacturing Facility, or LMF, shown on the left in an
illustration by NASA's artists. A whopping great thing with robotic
bulldozers that turned moondust into solar cells and oxygen. The
factory had to be capable of repairing and maintaining itself, as
well as produce the metals and fuel. If it could make all its own
parts, then why could it not also build a whole new factory? If you
need more factories, you just build another one. It would take a year
or so.
Taking
this bright idea a little further, some reasoned that it'd be pretty
darned handy to have a machine like that on Earth. One brave person,
Adrian Bowyer of Bath
University, realised that the best way for everybody to get the
benefit of this technology rapidly was to get the ball rolling. He
started developing the technologies necessary, and has decided to put
all the documents, instructions and patents out under a licence
called the GPL. Briefly, it says that among other things you must
contribute back any changes you make for other than your own use.
This cunning licence stops people sitting on ideas – it's why
Microsoft hasn't crushed the Linux operating system on computers as
it has with virtually all purely commercial systems. He has
demonstrated the technologies by building this little robot on the
right, also released under the same licence.
Adrian's
method is to make a kit of parts available for the "RepRap"
as they call it, distributed at cost, so people can build their own
and start making things with it. As improvements happen, the changes
go back to Adrian for redistribution, and existing users can then
build new "patches" to upgrade their existing systems to
version 1.1 - it prints its own spare parts too. Only useful if
you've got more than one, of course.
As the machine can now scratch build everything but the electrical components like motors or chips, and probably won't bother to make readily available items like glue, syringes (above on the left), nuts and bolts or rubber bands, you can make as many as you like. Give one to a friend – at least they're more controllable than the legendary ginger beer plants.
If
people like Adrian and the others involved in this project have their
way, the number of these around is only going to be limited by
enthusiasm and raw materials – in this case plastic, a
low-temperature solder called "Wood's Metal" and a few odds
& sods. Improvement of the design is basically inevitable,
developing the abilities to process different materials and recycle
them are obvious starting points. With a bit of shared knowledge and
cooperation, hopefully its descendants will form the basis of a
spacefareing civilisation.
So, other than that, what's cooking in space these days? Well, cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov launched a satellite by hand on the 29th March, not to commemorate my 19th wedding anniversary, but to test new command and control systems for small satellites. The Nanosputnik weighed under 5 kilos, a growing trend for low-weight designs, and was simply pushed out of the airlock of the International Space Station (right - those nice NASA people have made these pictures available to us). The photo on the lower left shows a smug Sharipov holding the satellite in his hand while floating about inside the ISS.
They've
also been working on the Elektron oxygen-generating system –
again. It's been a bit balky for most of the last two weeks, and it's
off as I write. They've got plenty of oxygen in the tanks onboard,
plus emergency oxygen, and the supplies in the suits and return craft
so nobody is panicking. Swearing, probably, but not panicking.
This edition is also on the web, just
point your web browser to http://olliver.family.gen.nz.
vik@olliver.family.gen.nz
"Never
offend people with style when you can offend them with substance."
- Sam Brown
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