4 ms·

> As far as I'm concerned, it's black magic and truly an incredible achievement for humanity. Fabs seem to be the far edge of tools-to-make-the-tools dependen

> As far as I'm concerned, it's black magic and truly an incredible achievement for humanity. Fabs seem to be the far edge of tools-to-make-the-tools dependency stack, with some of the necessary sorcerous gadgets (like EUV lithography) themselves only having a single supplier with the necessary secret incantations on the other side of the planet. Does the knowledge even exist to bootstrap things back up again should the present infrastructure and supply chains be sufficiently disrupted? I've long admired David J. Gingery's 'Build Your Own Metal Working Shop from Scrap' and wondered whether anything like it is even possible for integrated circuits.

DavidPeiffer 5y ago
>Does the knowledge even exist to bootstrap things back up again should the present infrastructure and supply chains be sufficiently disrupted? Man, I'd love to know. Hypothetical scenarios are: 1) Everything is available at your fingertips supply chain wise, but you have no equipment. How long until we're at our current technical capability? 2) No equipment and the supply chain need to be rebuilt, but the designs are still present. 3) We have sticks and stones and whatever is in our brains. Start fresh like a game of Factorio and see how well you can do on a speed run.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > 3) We have sticks and stones and whatever is in our brains. Start fresh like a game of Factorio and see how well you can do on a speed run. I don't recall exactly where (some large ouvre like The Culture, or The Polity), but some SF novel referred in passing to this becoming an extreme sport: Your team is dropped with no supplies on an uninhabited planet, and you try to bootstrap back to an interstellar capability. IIRC, the aside mentioned that the current record was ~70 years, by a team genetically engineered for ultra-efficient digestion and no need for sleep.

DavidPeiffer 5y ago

>Does the knowledge even exist to bootstrap things back up again should the present infrastructure and supply chains be sufficiently disrupted? Man, I'd love to know. Hypothetical scenarios are: 1) Everything is available at your fingertips supply chain wise, but you have no equipment. How long until we're at our current technical capability? 2) No equipment and the supply chain need to be rebuilt, but the designs are still present. 3) We have sticks and stones and whatever is in our brains. Start fresh like a game of Factorio and see how well you can do on a speed run.

webmaven 5y ago
> 3) We have sticks and stones and whatever is in our brains. Start fresh like a game of Factorio and see how well you can do on a speed run. I don't recall exactly where (some large ouvre like The Culture, or The Polity), but some SF novel referred in passing to this becoming an extreme sport: Your team is dropped with no supplies on an uninhabited planet, and you try to bootstrap back to an interstellar capability. IIRC, the aside mentioned that the current record was ~70 years, by a team genetically engineered for ultra-efficient digestion and no need for sleep.