Atomically Precise Manufacturing aka Nanotechnology

If you are an expert on A.P.M., you will read these pages through a very different lens than most of my audience. Like superconductors, nanotechnology is a magic buzzword without concrete meaning for most people.

The possibilities of superconductivity were clear to its discoverer Onnes in 1911, but were not realized because pure elemental (Type 1) superconductors aren't robust. Practical applications awaited the work of Meissner and Ochsenfeld (1933), the Londons (1935), Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer (1957), and advanced alloys of Niobium (1954).

A.P.M. is making great progress, and will certainly show widely deployed results sooner than 2036, the 50th anniversary of Eric Drexler's "Engines of Creation". However, in 2012, we cannot accurately predict the course of progress of A.P.M., or what processes it will impact first. Will it be computation? Solar cells? Radiation resistance? The problem is not the relevance of molecular scale manufacturing, but in which directions it will expand the "possibility space" first, or more accurately, which directions will be closed off by stumbling blocks and lack of robustness. While Eric has a much better idea about near-term directions, and may write about it here someday, I am not competent to make such predictions.

Take the musings on this site as an approximation, and if you are an expert on A.P.M., re-vector my musings in the directions your expertise may take them. If you know little about nanotechnology, assume that the potential space around Server Sky is huge and undefined. The spot I describe here is in that possibility space, but the paths actually taken will be more feasible, cost effective, and environmentally benign. Take the optimism and enormous possibilities described here and multiply them, beyond my understanding or yours.

Atomically Precise Manufacturing is by no means the only potential technology that will change the description of Server Sky and space energy. Advances in laser efficiency and steerability could replace radio transmission with light. Economic improvements in rural China, India, or Africa could radically alter applications and developers. And war could change everything. If you have expertise in any of these areas, and can describe their effects in quantifiable design-applicable ways, please write about them.