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Almost all large-scale manufacturing in the civilized sphere involves fabrication via assembler, whether on the meso-, nano- scale. No matter how complex the details, the principles are very simple. Information (templates) and raw material (feedlot) are fed to the assembly mesites, nanites, or picites. These then use the instructions in the template to create the desired product out of the feedlot.
This is not to say that other technologies and means are not also used - in fact everything from dumbtech neoprim assembly by hand or production line to transapient-level metric engineering can be found somewhere in the galaxy. But nanofabrication, especially via small-scale domestic autofabs , and use of a user-friendly interface that often even the dullest sophont can operate, is the easiest and simplest way to replicate or manufacture any good, and a decent autofab will be found in nearly any home unit in the civilized galaxy. Not all fabrication is domestic, of course, and there are large industrial units, often using partially assembled components in the feedlot to increase efficiency.
All that is required for an autofab to work are the nanites themselves and their operating software, simple raw materials, power supply and the template of the item to be fabricated, usually using elaborate library functions to reduce redundancy and file size. It is this last that is in most demand, making research, production, and publishing of templates the boom industry it has been for the past eight thousand years.
Other options besides the basic autofab or nanofab include bio-vats and vattices containing large quantities or organobiota among which swim microbio and mesobio assemblers, crystal solution condensates, plasma chambers, and other more exotic alternatives.
The obvious limit to fabrication is the size of assembler. A mesoassembler cannot produce an item that requires atomic precision; a nanoassembler is equally useless for one that needs custom-made quantum waveforms or subatomic particles arranged in a particular way, and a picoassembler cannot work with gluons and superstrings. Hence there will always be a further level of ultratech or nootech, at the level of which one's own fabrication unit cannot operate. Hence these still have to be imported, if one wishes to use them.
Another limiting factor is thermal pollution, and this increases the
smaller the scale that one works at, because of the greater processing
speed. A nanofab will produce a fair amount of waste heat, much more
than a mesofab, but as long as it is not used overmuch this will not be
a problem. Manufacturing that involves the manipulation or creation of
fundamental particles will run very hot indeed. Most such operations
are located in deep
well
industrial zones and in generally low resource systems. They are
not used on an a domestic scale. Most of what an ordinary sapient being
involves ordinary matter.
In the 105th century a.t., manufacturing using ordinary matter depends heavily on nanotech, biotech or syntech. While many materials and items are "grown" or disassembled using drytech nano or bionano, manufactures also require significant manipulations on the visible scale. This includes the actions of machines of various sizes, from mobile types of synsect to bots of multi-ton size to the feed lines and nanofac vats that are often used to make manufacturing swifter and more reliable. For large scale applications power is beamed from the inner parts of a solar system, where energy is most abundant, to the middle and outer reaches, where matter is more abundant. Common practice is that once received at a central station this power is redistributed locally via superconducting materials. Smaller scale applications may require only local power supplies: solar, fusion, or (on some planetary surfaces) water or wind power or the local equivalent.
Nanofacturing is speediest and easiest when the available materials are highly concentrated, and is easiest of all if the material feedstocks are in the form of fluids. Solid materials need to be disassembled before manufacturing can take place, a process that requires energy and is subject to surface area constraints. If a wide range of nanofactured products are required, the variety of elements found on a planetary or lunar body is also a bonus, since single asteroids or comets tend to have a fairly restricted range of elements (according to whether they are primarily nickel-iron, silicate, carbonaceous, or icy). Even elements found in naturally low local abundance can be concentrated if a large volume of material (especially hydrosphere or atmosphere) is available to nanotech sorting and concentrating machinery. If an atmosphere is present, the presence of the reactive gases found on life bearing worlds (oxygen for instance) is a detriment, as it may interfere with nano. A protected area, either a meter or more below the surface of a solid object or within the cloak of an atmosphere or hydrosphere, is also desirable, as nanites are least vulnerable to damage and mutation where their exposure to cosmic rays and the solar wind is lowest. Other things being equal, a vacuum is often useful for the operations themselves. This tends to favour sites that are not in an atmosphere, since creating the appropriate environment is easier, though on balance the ready availability of fluid materials can be more important. Ambient temperature is also a factor; most nano is non-functional at temperatures high above 500 Celsius and is very slow below the -200 Celsius mark, although within these broad constraints nanoassemblers can be created to work according to the temperatures available. In the case of extreme cold, of course, materials can be warmed, whereas cooling is usually a much more difficult proposition. Nano also needs an energy source, but relatively speaking energy is the least important factor, since it can be generated locally or (if the site is not in an atmosphere) beamed from the inner parts of the system.
The result of these constraints is that the most productive manufacturing operations take place on a planet or moon (or a large artificial body such as a Banks orbital) that has a thick hydrosphere and/or atmosphere at chemical equilibrium, usually one which is near its star but does not have an overwhelming greenhouse effect. Next in economy and productivity is a planet, moon or large asteroid with a solid surface of ice or rock, regardless of location (given that power can be beamed from insystem), or a life-bearing world with an atmosphere that contains reactive gases. Scattered resources, such as planetary rings, typical elements of asteroid belts, and oort clouds (more or less in that order) are more expensive to develop, since in these cases only so much material can be processed before a move to the next chunk of rock and ice. The slowest and most expensive manufacturing operations are those that take place in extremely diffuse media, such as a nebula.
A final factor is the cost of moving the nanofactured materials to where they will be used. Whenever possible, of course, nanofacturing takes place somewhere with reasonable access to populations. The key factor in this case is the energy cost for transportation, not distance. Boosting nanofactured objects up out of a gravity well is only economical for small, light, relatively valuable items, or when the basic materials simply are not available elsewhere. This is why nanofacturing more often takes place further out in a system; it is easier to beam power to an outer system site than to boost finished products to a higher orbit around a star. It is also why nanofacturing on most planetary surfaces is not particularly useful other than to those who live on that particular planet. Even if a beanstalk is available, there are still prohibitive energy costs for exports. If it were not for this, and for environmental considerations, the best site of all for nanofacturing would be beside the ocean on a world with an atmosphere and liquid water.
Nanotech can make a huge range of materials, but it is cheapest for materials containing elements with the highest cosmic abundance. Water, ammonia, and methane, either as liquids or as ices and clathrates, would be the most economical, but they are not particularly useful as final products to most terragen clades since they are not stable at the temperatures that the terragens typically find comfortable. The Muuh have a relative advantage in this case. For instance, they have some extremely advanced technologies that use the various phases of water ice.
At temperatures friendly to Terragens, various organic materials are
very useful. Nothing equals the range of compounds one can make with
carbon, and hydrogen is by far the most abundant element. Basic
hydrocarbon polymers remain cheap and versatile, and the Age of
Plastics has not ended. In addition, a whole range of more complex
organics like cellulose, lignin, chitin, and protein are
extraordinarily cheap and versatile. Since the advent of working dry or
bio nanotech, the Age of Wood has returned in a more sophisticated
form. Wood-like substances are extremely common, not only because their
practical and aesthetic appeal based on their sophisticated
microstructure but also because the elements from which they are
constructed are so abundant.
Pure carbon is the backbone of the nanofacturing business, given the cosmic abundance of carbon itself and the strength of the carbon-carbon bond. The various kinds of "diamondoid" and fullerenes are pervasive. They were among the first products of nanofacture, and remain the single most common category of material produced to this very day.
Oxygen is even more common than carbon, and although not a construction material itself it may be used in combination with elements such as silicon, calcium, and aluminum, to produce carbonates, silicates or aluminosilicates (rock, for the uninitiated) as well as various ceramics. Silicon carbide, silicon nitride, and other covalently bonded, hard substances are used in much the same way as diamondoid, though since they may use less common elements or have more complicated chemical formulae they are more difficult and expensive to create. Nickel and iron are quite abundant in the cosmos, and see a good deal of use, especially in applications that require the set of properties unique to metals. Chromium, manganese, titanium and cobalt are also used in their metallic forms or as alloys with other metals, since they are relatively common. Copper and lead, humanity's ancient standbys, are joined by other elements such as zirconium and cerium which are cosmically abundant but tend to be found dispersed among other elements rather than in concentrated form. Yet more specialized applications use the so-called "rare earths", which are actually more abundant than such elements as gold or silver but were little used on Old Earth because they are dispersed rather than concentrated by typical geological processes. Nanotechnology's ability to sort atoms has overcome this limitation, and these metals have come to the fore.
Some of the least common elements are created, rather than sifted from the pool of available materials. Nucleosynthesis, usually in deep well industrial zones, can produce heavier elements, as can picotech processes. The trade-off in cost is at about the cosmic abundance of gold or tungsten, though of course this varies according to the metallicity of the local system.
Other things being equal, highly complex shapes are much more expensive to manufacture than simple shapes. A simple block of diamondoid is much cheaper than a rod-logic diamondoid computer of the same mass, and a simple crystal of diamond is more complicated than something like jadeite. Likewise, imparting a complex form, such as that of a vehicle, or a foam-like or wood-like microstructure to a nanofactured object is quite expensive since it requires complex emergent effects in the nanite swarm. Most expensive of all are smart materials, ranging from those with shape memory or responsiveness to environmental conditions to those which actually have some limited processing ability and can change shape, colour, texture, or other properties according to commands or to pre-set programs.
Vat-based nanofacturing using a "feed" of materials in a controlled environment is the cheapest and most versatile form of nanofacturing. Such vats are either served by feed lines, which provide elements either as pure or as simple compounds or (more rarely) have stockpiles of the necessary material. Nanites are introduced into this controlled environment, and then build an item to order. Such vats range from the gigantic constructs used to create ships, habitats, or parts for megascale engineering, to the neighbourhood or community vat used for vehicles, and other items which are large or complex, to home nanofac units which produce the smallest and least complicated kinds of items. A neighbourhood nanofac vat, which serves as a combination "store" and "factory", is a feature of many societies. Feed lines for nanofacs are one of the features of modern urban life. The balance of these industrial, community, and home nanofacs varies considerably according to clade and culture. Orangutan provolves, for instance, usually prefer extensive home nanofacture capability, despite the relative inefficiency of this arrangement, since they tend to avoid unnecessary social interactions. Human nearbaselines, on the other hand, may prefer to "go out" for larger items not only because the range and power of a community nanofac is greater but also because it is an opportunity to visit, gossip, and see and be seen. Some polities prefer to restrict access to the larger, wider ranging and more powerful nanofac facilities in any case, either from a desire for control on the part of rulers or from a more practical impulse to prevent malicious or careless usage. In most polities the range of items that can be produced by a legal nanofac is keyed to personal identities, to prevent access to dangerous designs by children or unstable individuals. Most home or community nanofacs also have some safety features of this sort even if the polity is quite liberal.
"Seed" technology is rarer and much more complex than vat and feed methods. Nanotech "seeds" may be drytech nano or bionano based, or a combination of the two, and are an integration of nanotech with larger scale technologies. From the basic seed nanites a structure can grow on site, gather available materials using root or leaf like structures to harvest the elements they require from the soil, air, and water, collect available natural energy sources or tap into a local power grid, and then "grow" the required item. This self-assembling manufacturing structure then produces the required item or substance, on a one-time basis, or for a pre-programmed period, or indefinitely. Such seeds need to be tailored exactly to particular environments to function properly and safely. Small home or community use seed nanotech is subject to a wide range of local bylaws, especially in dense settlements, to prevent damage to the habitat and disputes between neighbours. The larger-scale industrial-grade "seed" nanotech devices with self-replicating ability are almost always designed and deployed by transapient entities, to prevent mistakes. Entire planetary surfaces have been changed forever by runaway processes. In civilized regions even use by transapient entities is subject to the supervision of their toposophic peers and superiors.
| Autofab automated factory or device capable of manufacturing products without supervision Bioforge - a biological factory or manufacturing device capable of creating a wide range of biotech products Industrial Ecology - the study and implementation of efficient industrial systems coexisting with the natural environments within which they operate Municipal Feedstock Utilities - a system for supplying raw materials to nanotech fabricators |
