From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Wed Oct 21 1998 - 00:37:25 MDT
Joe Jenkins wrote:
> ...around 1988 when I found Engines of Creation and literally read it
> front to back, called in sick at work turned the book over and did it...
joe, i didnt get to finish my previous thought. i looked thru my copy of
engines which i purchased in 1989 in san jose. i did not find in there
the idea i had at the time (it may be there somewhere), an idea that
might sound a little strange coming from a launcher type like myself.
in 89 i had been thinking about space stations. k eric goes on about
how nanotech will be the great breakthru in manufacturing that will
be needed for real space stations, better launchers, etc.
my notion at the time was that humans could actually reinvent
ourselves if we mastered nanotech, so that our scale would not
be 2 meters but rather 2 millimeters. our glorified bodies
could be the scale of ants, yet if our atoms were correctly utilized,
we would still be these wonderfully brilliant creatures that we are.
(humble too).
then, the launcher problem would already be solved,
by good old 1950s rocket technology. the scarcity of materials
and energy in space would be solved, by the same old technology.
even a tiny asteroid would have plenty of raw materials for billion
of "us". our modest home planet would then be unimaginably
emmense and its gravitational field remarkably gentle. has this
notion been explored in sci fi? spike
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