Theres a vast and almost impassable desert, possibly a more natural phemonenon, that separates east from west on one side, and a vast north/south mountain range that separates east from west on the other side. We can assume that it may well have contributed to the western hemisphere being more backwards and less sophisticated than the east. The only major review, in Nature, noted that the feasibility of Drexler’s scheme “has not even begun to be demonstrated.” This tentative assessment hinted, if only faintly, at the questions that have dogged Drexler from the start. Ill go with the longer span for the hell of it, even a few million years is a heartbeat in geological time. After years of lobbying by the Foresight Institute, in May 2003 the House passed the Nanotechnology Research and Development Act by a lopsided vote of 405 to 19. The bill contained a provision – written by California representative Brad Sherman, a Drexler supporter who had spoken at Foresight’s annual conference the previous year – calling for a study to “develop, insofar as possible, a consensus on whether molecular manufacturing is technically feasible.” If the technology was deemed feasible, the study would find “the estimated time frame in which molecular manufacturing may be possible on a commercial scale; and recommendations for a research agenda necessary to achieve this result.” With this language, Congress was on the verge of making Drexler’s dream a reality.
Last year, he divorced Christine Peterson, his wife of 21 years and president of his nonprofit think tank, the Foresight Institute; now she’s resigning her post to write a book on nanotechnology. As New Hampshire’s John Sununu remarked on the Senate floor, “some people have expressed concern that nanotechnology will lead to a superrace of humans or a situation where nanomachines attack or even dominate human beings.” Molecular manufacturing is a “loaded term,” a Senate staffer says. We have some idea of the rough location of several of the western hemisphere cities in relation to each other – distances and travel times are given for Malthor, Kroth, Rombus and Vorthis. There is a road that leads from Malthor to Rombus. Are his ideas feasible or fantastical? We are divided from it by a great mountain range on the east, which runs almost from pole to pole, and by an almost barren desert on the west, which no man has ever crossed. The remaining rods are unified and serve the function of reactivity scramming, automatic maintenance of the reactor power release at the set level, control of energy distribution over the core radius. Because of this, Venus internal core heat cannot dissipate.
Of course, Venus core has, like Mars and Mercury and even Earths, slowly been cooling, their energies left over from the planets formation. But I could expect some science fiction writer to use a cyclical world like this, or perhaps even write about terraforming Ganymede. Or it may be something even more exotic, like harvesting electrostatic potential. The timing of ceremonial occasions like marriages is governed by these moons. Nonetheless, Drexler’s ideas were respectable enough that in 1981, the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published his first major paper, “Molecular Engineering: An Approach to the Development of General Capabilities for Molecular Manipulation.” His first book, Engines of Creation, published in 1986, introduced the term nanotechnology to the world at large. Drexler’s ideas had always been outlandish and his political skills underdeveloped. For one thing, the MIT prodigy was short on the schmoozing skills necessary for success in big science. MIT chemist Rick Danheiser, who served as Drexler’s thesis adviser, in 1992. “I couldn’t have done a better job.” “It showed utter contempt for chemistry,” countered Danheiser’s colleague Julius Rebek.
