The Santa Claus Machine
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This was an invited talk I did on the subject of the inevitability of technology. This questions this thesis by presenting the Santa Claus Machine, a technology that has never happened. This talk is about technology from the 70's which we would now regard as the ultimate 3-D printer call the Santa Clause machine. Using an industrial scale Mass-Spectrograph it is possible to make a machine which is capable of creating a copy of its self and anything else. Fed by eating small asteroids the machine would be capable of building anything required.
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The Santa Claus Machine
- 1. The Santa Claus machine S. Dalton (n.dalton-@-open.ac.uk)
- 2. Technology is not inevitable
- 3. Spaceships of the Mind Nigel Calder 1978
- 5. +ve +ve +ve +ve Ionisation +ve +ve +ve
- 6. -ve -ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve -ve -ve
- 7. -ve -ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve -ve -ve
- 8. -ve -ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve -ve -ve
- 9. -ve -ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve -ve -ve
- 10. Cathode ray
- 11. TV set
- 12. Ion drive An ion thruster test for NASA's Deep Space 1.
- 13. +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve
- 14. N +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve S +ve
- 15. N +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve S +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve +ve
- 22. Heliostat
- 23. The solar furnace at Odeillo The temperature at the focal point may reach 3,500 °C (6,330 °F
- 24. +ve +ve +ve +ve
- 25. Rare elements
- 26. Iron 61% Magnesium 33% Aluminum 3% Nickel Cobolt 4% 0.17% Titanium 0.2% Platinum 0.0003%
- 30. Iron 61% Magnesium 33% Aluminum 3% Nickel Cobolt 4% 0.17% Titanium 0.2% Platinum 0.0003%
- 31. N +Iro +Iron +Iron +Iron +Iron S +cobolt +cobolt +cobolt +cobo +platium +osmium
- 32. +Iron +Iron
- 33. vapor deposition
- 36. Heliostat
- 41. Shape memory metal nickel+titanium, copper-zinc-aluminum-nickel and copper-aluminium-nickel
- 46. Generation Machines 1 1 2 2 3 4 4 8 5 16 6 32 7 64 8 128
- 47. Solar sail
- 48. Ion drive An ion thruster test for NASA's Deep Space 1.
- 57. from a single mission • Direct return of rare earth minerals • Supply of high value materials to earth orbit • Cheap space exploration • Advanced components to earth • Free electricity • Unlimited amounts of material goods • No terrestrial pollution
- 58. Questions • What about the junk ? • What about the moon.
- 59. • Mass Driver
Editor's Notes
- The theme for the presentations today is the non inevitability of technology. So I’m going to spend the next ten minutes covering one of my favourite technologies that deserve wider recognition. I came across this one back on a BBC TV program in the 1970s. I thought it was beyond being a disruptive technology. Its It makes the internet look like a mild convenience by comparison. The rewards would be beyond imagining yet everything is simple and moderately cheap and technologically very within reach. Yet why havn’t we seen corporations and countries rush towards this god technology? Well that’s the point of all the presentations today.
- So the technology I’m going to talk about was brought to my attention from a TV show and a book called Space Ships of the mind.
- OK lets begin with a plasma. To make a plasma you generally heat something in a vacuum then put in electricity to strip off the outer electrons. This may sound hard but it happens every time you turn on a Fluorescent Light Bulb.
- Now in a Fluorescent Light Bulb your heating and ionising a gas. But anything can be a plasma , after solid liquid and gas plasma is the fourth state of matter. If you heat any molecule enough it will disassociate into its constituent atoms and these atoms are charged.
- If you now put a positive charged plate with a hole near the ions run towards it. If this sounds familiar it is.
- If you now put a positive charged plate with a hole near the ions run towards it. If this sounds familiar it is.
- If you now put a positive charged plate with a hole near the ions run towards it. If this sounds familiar it is.
- If you now put a positive charged plate with a hole in it. Because opposits attract the ions fly towards it. If this sounds familiar it is.
- Its how a cathode ray works.
- Which is the basis for a TV tube.
- A cathod ray only uses electrons but with ion of atoms you can in space produce a small but very fast ray you an use to drive a space ship through space.
- Now you have a stream of charged ions coming out through the hole
- Now if we put a magnetic field across the streams of ions we find that the ions turn a curve.
- Now like a car taking a sharp corner the hevey ions turn less quickly and the lighter ones turn more sharply. So you end up with the ions sorted by atomic weight. the ions are sorted by mass into a spectrum.
- Now if this sounds familiar it is this is what we call a Mass spectrometer. A popular tool in chemistry. If you want to find out what a compond is you put it into a mass spectrograph.
- Current day mass spectrographs are designed to take smaller and smaller quanaties and detect very subtle ratios. But what if we go the other way.
- What if we put very large currents through it? What if we heat it to very high temperatures ? What if we have an industrial sized mass spectrometer ? If we did we could put any mineral in and get streams of the pure metal out. All we need is a really good vacuum and a lot of electricity So why would we do this ?
- Well what would happen if we put one on a satilite and aim it for an asteroid.
- Asteroids are small bits of rock in space. They are made from a number of different types of rock and they wonder space ranging in size from a house to a mountain up to about 2000 miles across. They wonder in orbits around the solar system, some close to earth. We have been looking for asteoirds which might hit the earth so we know of quite a few small near by asteroids. Some a so close in terms of energy that its actually simpler to reach them than get to the moon.
- So our unmanned space craft carrying our mass spectrograph approaches the asteroid. It lands and then starts to run the mass spectrograph. Remember to make a plasma we need heat, electricity and a really good vacumm. Something you get for free in space.
- In space we can get some other things for free. Aterdoids have pratically no gravity. So you can build very large light concentrating mirrors, the mirrors can concentrate the sun’s light and reach very high temperatures.
- On earth we use mirrors like this to reach very high temperatures up to 3500 degrees C. With no day and night, no clouds the mirrors can heat very hot constantly.
- So our space ship starts spliting the asteroid up atom by atom into its components.
- Things like platium the expensive catalyst in fuel cells.
- Lot of pure iron, Now the intreasting ones are the little ones. Platium and rear earth minerals can fetch a huge amount per kilogram.
- So we could igore the iron, nickle colbot - think of them as a by product. We could take the rare earth minerals. So initally the satilite could fill a capusle and return it to earth. I
- After a few months travel the capsle reenters the earths atmosphere and lands in some remote region. A few tones the right rare earth mineral would net you a few Billion pounds dollars what have you in cash.
- so what about the rest what can we do with all that iron coming out the back
- If we pick up the stream of iron atoms you can pass them though another magnet. Now just like the magnets on an old TV set we can wave the atom up and down left and right
- If the beam lands on something which will nutralise the charge then it will be deposited there. This is a process known as vapour deposition. If we weave backwards and forwards the beam then it will vert slowly make a flat shape. If we then start pointing the beam on to the previously deposited layer it will build up a three dimensional shape.
- ON earth this is called vapor disposition.
- With this you can form any shape you like. So what might you build ? Tanks filled with fuel for a deep space mission. Parts for a space station, well how about building one of these?
- We do complex shapes on earth like this. Except we can build in iron or nickel what others can built in plastic
- So how about making more Heliostats. In space weight is not a problem and we could over time built up a very big one in space with no gravity and no wind it can be a tiny invesment. This increases your production letting you send back more of these.
- Now your returns increased how about building more solar cells to generate more electricity ? Well if your asteroid has silicon in it like many do why not?
- So you can make helostats to heat the incoming material to high temperature. You might be able to make solar cells + useful to you and you might sell them in earth orbit. Why not built up more magnets after all they are just iron with copper wires around them. Each would boost your ability to built stuff.
- So at this point the machines start sending larger capsules back this time holding components. They could be car engines or parts for a washing machine, a sculpture of jon the baptist even a complete ship hull. This ability to return any object you can specify to be built with the deposition process mean you can start returning pratically any good. This is why it is called a santa clause machine it brings presants for free from the sky. Remember everything returned is created with out any envrionmental impact. No carbon is burn no polliution is created
- Now initally while its worth sending the exotic minerals home, the site of most value would be out in space. Hauling something up from the earth is very very expensive. Would you pay 100000 pounds for a liter of petrol ? Well NASA does when it wants to put fuel into space. Say to send a rocket to the moon or to Mars. If we go to a water rich asteroid we will be getting waste hydrogen and oxygen. If we capture the ion stream liquify it and can built tanks to house it in then return it to earth the cost of getting into deep space is vastly reduced even charging 1000 pounds per liter would make a huge saving to NASA and a huge profit for you.
- Remember we are getting huge amounts of Nickel and titanium, one thing you could do is mix streams and built up a bar of what is known as memory metal. By heating it you can make it remember its previous shape and make it flex like a primative metal musle.
- Perhaps with this or with other methods you could build an robot arm like the one on the space shuttle. This would help you not just to built components but slowly assemble whole objects. Remember near an asteroid you could move very large hevey objects with out much strength. This lets you build up more complex machines from the components you can already build. At this point you can think about sending the principle components of a car or washing machine back.
- So of all the things you could bulid what would you built first ? why not push this to the limit - why not build an entirely new mass spectrograph ? Jon Von Neuman inventor of much digital wondered about this in the 1940s. A machine capable of self reproduction - kind of.
- We have done this on earth in a simple way with the Rep-rap project. A machine capable to make a copy of its self.
- It make take years of experiance nessary to built up tto this stage but if you could suddenly your getting twice as much return from the same mission.
- If your machine is suited to the raw materials of the asteroid each machine can make a copy of its self. Perhaps you might have to supply the tiny computer perhaps you might be so smart each machine can make even a copy of the computer. Yes the copy might be the size of a room but in space size doesn’t matter. Remember these don’t cost you any thing.
- Eventually you might get so many that the asteroid becomes crowded. At this point the new ones built solar sails huge thing mirrors and use the pressure of light to move them to another asteroid. You could also use these to bring huge amounts of things back to earth orbit - very slowly.
- Remember the mass spectrograph in space is like an Ion dirve with magnets ? Well why not switch the magnets off and get an inefficent ion drive to push your santa clause machine off to parts unknown.
- A single asteoird could would be tens of millions of tonns far more than our needs for the next few years but there are far more asteroids out there.
- You could start building things of high value in earth orbit. How about a space telescope. No longer confined to a mirror which you can put into a rocket. You would have to launch the electronics from earth though.
- Why not to big and build space based radio telescope ? Why not build a hundred or one a kilometer big+ It could point down from geostationary orbit at earth and pick up very faint signals from a mobile phone. They could also point to deep space forming a kind of internet to talk to the santa clause machines.
- The next thing you might build is a solar power station. Your building solar pannels for your santa clause machine so why not build more. Initally you could sell these to the space stations and other satellite manufacturers. After a while you build ones with microwave transmitters. This was first demonstrated in the 1960s - you can sent microwaves though the air with out heating any thing and receiving with very high effiencey on the ground. Result free electricty.Now I will admit that there are some big assuptions in that.
- Building a cylinder is quite simple why not build one with huge amounts of radiation shielding and oxygen and nitrogen inside ? Do this at the scale of many kilometers like was suggested in the 70’s and you have a space colony. These sit in high orbits between the earth and the moon.
- Bring the biology from the earth and you might be able to create your own self sustaining space colony. Remember the water carbon and so on can be collected from asteroids. All you need are seeds and some time to get the ecology right.
- OK so lets recap. We start with a single Santa clause machine. This wieghs a few tons.
- You launch it on a conventional rocket launcher to an asteroid
- IN return you direct some quick low tech benifits and with rare earth minerals this pays for the first mission a hundred times over. With a true santa clasue machine you get a steady increase in hany stuff being return.