3D printer to churn out copies of itself

The article speculates that this could cause the price of 3D printers to plummet from around $25,000 to around $500. The scientist working on this is also planning to make the self-replication software open source, so others can make improvements. Let’s hope this project pans out…

I was just thinking about your pack rat idea.

That would probably be a problem at first. We have these fab labs that can make us anything we want…and so we begin filling our house with this stuff.

Pretty soon we’d realize that more than the stuff, we need space to walk. At that point – particularly if fab labs had become reasonably fast in operation – we might start living a “Just In Time” lifestyle.

If we need something we’d fabricate it, use it, and then toss it in the fab recycle bin where the basic materials could be used again to fab something else.

A smart fab lab could even keep an inventory of the bin. If you asked it to fab something already in the bin it could ask: “That item has been fabricated and is awaiting recycling, are you sure you’d like to refab?”

I was having similar problems signing on to these comments on my home machine.

I downloaded a different browser (Opera, actually) and it works.

Maybe there’s some setting in IE that would clear this problem up.

This is not to say that it’s impossible; I can’t see why a TP plant couldn’t be designed to use heat from e.g. a solar concentrator instead of burning its own gas production, allowing the processing of inputs unable to produce enough energy to be self-sustaining and effectively converting solar heat to chemical fuel.

(The silly posting system is once again claiming I’m logged in for entry, but that I’m not when I click the post button.  Five attempts thus far.)

Food waste (even sewage) can be reclaimed as oil:

http://www.mindfully.org/Energy/2003/Anything-Into-Oil1may03.htm

Our energy problems will be related to the environment, not availability.

With a Fab Lab in the basement, I doubt I would throw out anything except for food waste. (Or is there something cool I could do with that that I’m not thinking of?)

If you go the thermal depolymerization route, you could convert it into hydrocarbon fuel or monomer feedstock.

Who needs a supply of oil when you can recycle your plastics almost indefinitely? Especially if you can make your monomers with a bunch of bugs in a vat?

You’re assuming that the world can’t go back to coal, of which we still have hundreds of years of supply.  I assure you, the technology for this is well-established and widely avaialble, and at a certain cost for oil it will be used if nothing else is available.  The consequences of climate change may wreak havoc on seacoasts and southern countries, but technological society would continue.

But that’s not inevtable either.  The world is literally drenched in free energy; impervious area (roofs and pavements) in the USA covers roughly the area of Ohio, and roughly 500 quads of sunlight falls on this area every year compared to the USA’s current total energy consumption of about 100 quads.  Our problem thus far is that our technology for capturing it in useful form has not been adequate to our needs.

This is rapidly changing.  We can already use green algae to convert sunlight to hydrogen at an efficiency of a few percent, and the projected efficiency of quantum-dot-assisted plastic PV cells is 30%.  As an example of how much power that could yield, consider that a container ship might be powered by an 80,000 HP diesel engine (~60 MW).  Today’s biggest container ships are about 300 meters long by 42.8 meters wide.  The surface area is about 12,800 m^2.  At a solar flux of 1000 W/m^2 and 30% efficiency, this could generate about 3.8 MW.  Ship speed scales as roughly the inverse cube of power (up to hull speed), so the 3.8 MW of solar power could drive such a ship at about 10 knots, perhaps faster.

At 30% efficiency, the 500 quads of solar energy falling the USA’s impervious area could produce 150 quads of electricity.  This represents a 15 times increase over our current consumption of less than 10 quads of coal and nuclear electricity per year.  In other words, there is oodles of room to grow.

PS: ‘cheap plastic toys’ are made entirely from oil.

One of the most exciting aspects of the Fab Labs scenario is that it promises an evolutionary path for recycling: from an inefficient collectivist enterprise to something we all can and will do. With a Fab Lab in the basement, I doubt I would throw out anything except for food waste. (Or is there something cool I could do with that that I’m not thinking of?)

Anyway, while there’s a risk that we all might turn into unbelieveable pack rats, I don’t think there’s any risk at all that new oil would have to be drilled in order to allow us to fabricate cheap plastic toys.

I’m sure that part of my speculation will also seem naïve in 25 years. I’m hopeful that we Speculists get enough things right to be a small part of the conversation to get us there.

Petroleum has been critical. But so has writing, the printing press, computers, etc. Perhaps 4 billion would starve if we woke up tomorrow in a world magically devoid of oil. But it won’t happen like that. Instead, oil will slowly rise in price as it becomes harder to retrieve.

As the price of oil rises, the alternatives will become more attractive. There are many alternatives. Knowledge is our greatest resource. Even if we see the worst case – oil slowly running out in the next 50 years – we wouldn’t lose all that we’ve learned and continue to learn at an exponential rate in our petroleum civilization. The advancing state-of-the-art will be applied to the problem and a solution will be found.

Our children won’t experience a Mad Max dystopia except in virtual reality games.

I hope that these changes will not concentrate wealth. Certainly there will be fewer manual labor jobs if most manufacturing goes to fabrication. But there will be more information jobs too.

Also, the availability of very cheap goods will change the entire economy. What will it mean to be considered rich when almost everyone has ready access to most basic goods?

I’m not suggesting that this will be a Star Trek level utopia, but I think the economy will be very different.

PS: ‘cheap plastic toys’ are made entirely from oil.