Nanosystems

Nanosystems (1992) written by Eric K. Drexler - It covers the basics of atomically precise maufacturing and adheres to exploratory engineering to make reliable predictions about future technology

Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation - by K. Eric Drexler

"Nanosystems" <ref name="nasy">Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation - by K. Eric Drexler (1992)</ref> is the main technical reference book for feasibility analysis of the far term target of atomically precise manufacturing. This far term target being gemstone based metamaterial technology. The book is for the most part:

• an identification of a sensible far-term-target technology
• a stringently conducted feasibility study of this target technology

Only the very last chapter touches briefly and incompletely on eventual approaches that could be part of some pathways towards that target technology.

Dodge the trapdoors

Energy density trapdoor

The extremely high energy densities listed right at the books start and derived further in
do not take into account the needed cooling for larger macroscopic chunks
of dense nanomachinery run at steady state.

It is meant as that such nanomachinery can be …
★ either run as dense macroscale chunks at these powers in shortly pulsed long cool-down pauses mode
★ or as only a few lone active nanomechanisms in a nanoscale volume in steady state mode.
Latter case making use of nanoscales enormous surface to volume ratio for cooling.

I.e. The machineries operation must be either sparse in time or sparse in space.
Of course there is a gray zone of thin sheets and highly advanced cooling concepts that
(as of 2025) remains highly unexpored and partly still inaccessible to exploration as
physical experiments will be needed that current technology can't yet perform.

Missed energy/power dissipation mechanisms

Some reciprocative energy dissipation mechanisms that are not covered in nanosystems have been found.
They will require closer analysis and attention.

Questionably predictions for GHz nanomechanic logic – not critical for feasibility of productive nanosystems

While the ~1MHz operation frequencies and 5mm/s operation speeds
for productive nanosystemmnanomachinery still seem reasonable,
the feasiblity of the suggested rod logic run at ~1GHz seem
much more questionable now due to power dissipation levels.
See the areal power over speed charts on pages superlubricity and friction in gem-gum-tec.

Though this does not cut back as much at the technologies potential as one might think.
★ It still will be able to massively improve on electrical and optical computers.
★ Productive nanosystems merelyneeding ~1MHz & ~5mm/s will still produce much faster than
… e.g. bamboo growth and produce synthetic materials much better than bamboo and much more varied

A side-note spawned by the bamboo comparison as it is biodegrable whereas most products of APM will not be:
There should be kept a keen eye on spill prevention, recycling, and biodegradability
for preventing bad pollution and a potential severe gem-gum waste crisis,
just because it is technically easily possible to clean up does not necessarily mean
that it is economical and that it can be taken for granted that cleanups will happen.
No such discussions in Nanosystems. And understandably so, as it'd further dilute focus into highly speculative areas.

What you can and can't gain from reading Nanosystems

Here's what you can gain from reading Nanosystems
(and maybe for the first pass jumping over difficult parts to get the big picture quickly)

• The technical reasons for why diamondoid nanofactories seem like an ideal far-term-target.
• Or reversely: A (highly conservative) feasibility analysis of diamondoid technology.

So in case you are doubtful about the feasibility of the far-the-target or
just want to understand the technical reasons for the far-term-target
then Nanosystems is for you.

Here's what you can NOT gain from reading Nanosystems

• Detailed information/analysis of possible bootstrapping pathways.
  There's only a superficial bit on the incremental path at the very end.
• Discussion of gemstone based mechanical metamaterials as basis for future products.
• Ideas regarding the amazing stuff that will become possible with these kinds of metamaterials as new technological basis. Consult the work of the futurist writer Josh Storrs Hall on that. Josh Storrs Hall work is high level exploratory engineering unlike Nanosystems being low level EE. That is: It is much less reliable in predictions as predictions depend on many sub-predictions combinedly. More risk of building a "house of cards".
• Ideas on medical nanodevices: Consult Robert Freitas Nandemedicine series for that.
• Any discussion of molecular assemblers as these are NOT identified as ideal far term target for three reasons.

Free to read online version

• https://nanosyste.ms/
• same on the internet archive

Free to read dissertation preceding the Book

Eric Drexlers 1991 MIT dissertation is as he wrote
"a draft of Nanosystems" and was published by him for free to read.
Unfortunately his website is completely gone now (as of 2021-03).
But it's still available via internet archive (link below in external links section).
Edit (2023-08) and now via MIT download page.

Note that some parts are missing in the dissertation compared to the book including (not an exhaustive list):

• Nanosystems 11.6 Electromechanical devices (page 333) including 11.7. DC motors and generators (page 336)
• The final Nanofactory analysis listing an example System Table 14.1 (page 422)
• ...

Still the only resource on the topic

Till day of last review of this text (2024) there is still no other book available that:

• is covering the same topic and
• is also stringently applying exploratory engineering

As the first and last book of its kind it leaves a huge amount of exploratory engineering work that needs to be done.
And as a book that does not focus on pathways it leaves even more there..

Important things to note

No molecular assemblers in this book

In the technical book Nanosystems "universal molecular assemblers" are neither proposed nor even mentioned!

Instead in the brief section about pathways at the end of the book the incremental pathway to "nanofactories" is discussed prominently.
Using biotech to get away from biotech ASAP.
The only topic in the book that may be somewhat related to universal molecular assemblers and their direct path context
is a discussion of pressure driven diamondoid actuators and from withing expandable modular plate or block vacuum sealing methods.

Why is this important?
In the preceding popular science book Engines of Creaton "universal molecular assemblers" where discussed. See: Molecular assembler.
This lead to some hype, fear, and negative influence on relevant funding. As discussed in the newest popular science book on the topic: Radical Abundance.
Molecular assemblers are absent from nanosystems not for political reasons but for technical reasons.
One point of evidence being that the dissertation (1991) and book (1992) was published well before the problems manifested around 2000/2001.

Exploratory engineering

Nanosystems applies exploratory engineering (EE) as it's the guiding epistemological principle.
While EE is not science (just as math is not a science in the sense of not having a tight hypothesis-experiment cycle)
it's still practically useful with it's products being knowledge.
Knowledge about far therm targets that are worth aiming for.

Disclaimer

This wiki is written independently by third party and thus
does not necessarily accurately describe the ideas of the author of Nanosystems.

Found shortcomings

★ The power densities table (at start of Chapter 1.1. Why molecular manufacturing?)
is not making clear that this is only for short pulse operation (or a single lone nanomachine). Which is misleading.
Even with very high efficiency limits to advanced active cooling (same tech) will set lower steady state limits.
Where these limits lie is still very much unclear.

★ Newly as potentially dominant identified reciprocative dissipation mechanisms narrowing the headroom on friction losses.
This may be a big deal for nanomechanical rod-logic supposed to run at GHz. Motion amplitudes can be small though.
Much less a problem for proposed machine motions at MHz and mm/s.

★ Not communicated:
Superlubricity is more about absence of static friction than low dynamic fricton.
Dynamic friction can be quite low for low speeds but grows quadratic with speed so can get very big for high speeds.
Infinitesimal bearings can help a bit here. These (and metamaterials in general) are not covered in Nanosystems.

★ Likely some inconsistencies in the nanofactory table nearing the end of the book.
That table is not in the dissertation.

★ It misses to cover two extremely important scaling laws:
– Higher throughput of smaller machinery (this one Eric Drexler later published on his now gone website)
– Same relative deflections across scales (this one the author of this wiki found)

Related

• Other Books By Erik K. Drexler.
• Macroscale style machinery at the nanoscale
• How macroscale style machinery at the nanoscale outperforms its native scale
• Why gemstone metamaterial technology should work in brief

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• Concept animation Video summarizing the results of the book: Productive Nanosystems From molecules to superproducts
• Far term target: Gemstone metamaterial on chip factory which are part of and create more of gem-gum technology
• More generally: Advanced productive nanosystem
• More specifically: Design of gem-gum on-chip factories
• There's also: Discussion of proposed nanofactory designs
• Disambiguation page: Productive nanosystem (disambiguation)
• Theoretical overhang

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• Main Page

External links

• Read Nansystems Online

Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation
The whole book on the internet archive here (restricted access):
https://archive.org/details/nanosystemsmolec0000drex
You can get the book via amazon (as of 2023-08).

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Eric Drexlers MIT dissertation is covering a good part of Nanosystems and is freely available.
It is missing is e.g. the nanofactory analysis table and a few other things.
That table might have some issues leading this wikis author to do some reanalysis).

Molecular machinery and manufacturing with applications to computation Author(s) Drexler, K. Eric (1991)

• MIT Libraries DSpace@MIT
• (recovered via interent archive wayback machine archive)
• Alternate link (faster)
• "Original link - now broken :("

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On K. Eric Drexlers website (recovered via internet archive):

• Detailed table of contents and sample chapters
• Nanosystems: what it’s about, how it's used, and where to read more
• Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation

References

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