Howard Lovy has a scary little email exchange about progress in molecular manufacturing.

This is just another thought that supports my conviction that attaining supremacy in nano-technology should be a very high priority for the United States. It is simply too critical to let slide. Were another power to beat us to it, it almost definitely would be catastrophic.

EXACTLY! This is why the Luddites have it backwards. This should be a mega-priority or we could all be toast if someone else comes up with it first. Imagine Al-Qaeda with nanites and US with no nanite defenses!

On the plus side, immortality is getting closer and closer! We're making WAY faster progress on both fronts than I had expected even a year ago!

My paranoid fantasy is a group of young scientist huddle around a petri dish watching a diamond grow, unaware that replication errors are turning things into the grey goo nightmare scenario!

Then I wake up realizing that the energy and control requirements along with the generated heat of any mechanical design would destroy the process long before anything useful or dangerous could be produced.

Then I go back to bed and new dreams of biological designs keep me from getting any rest.

So I have a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster! and dream like a baby...

Anon: are you saying you don't believe ANY nanotechnology is possible, or just that scenario?

Anonymous #3 poster, it's interesting that you distinguish between nanotech -- which you regard as impossible for fundamental energistic and other physical reasons -- and biology... which is very clearly functioning nicely, thank you, at the same size scale.

Eric Drexler, among others, long ago used biological examples to demonstrate that nanoscale machinery was possible. Did you fail to do your research, or are you trolling?

Troy: you beat me to it. I was going to point out that DNA IS nanotechnology, but I was waiting to hear his answer first as I wasn't certain if he was referring to some specific early prototype nanotech or something.

I think people tend to think of MNT as "magic" rather than applied engineering. I don't expect it to be fast, after all, beef doesn't grow over night - but it will be cheap and accurate - it could certainly be a boon for various industries.

I am keep a close eye on this as it looks like the next big market to get into.

Dave: It won't be THAT slow. Just because cows don't grow fast doesn't mean that other creatures don't, or that it can't be done. It may not be "hollywood fast", but it'll be WAY faster than the time it takes a cow to grow up (at least when it's mature, at first, well, who knows...)

The nanofactory discussed in Rand's link is estimated to output a 4 kg, mostly-diamondoid product in about 3 hours, with a power input of some 200 kW. Granted that this is just an estimate (based on further estimates, since the mechanochemical fabricator isn't yet designed), the numbers are nonetheless believable.

Part of the reason for this believability is the detailed method of construction: the finished product is assembled in 19 nested steps, bottom-up, from a very large number of 200-nm parts; virtually all the time is spent making these billion-atom parts, while the iterative assembly of the parts takes only seconds to minutes. This is entirely consistent with biological assembly, where cells a hundred times this size have "manufacturing" times much smaller.

Another way of looking at it: point out the animal which uses a 200 kW power input, and I'll show you one with amazing growth rates!