3 ms·

I presume after the economy of scale kicks in, we'll be able to buy our own planets and suns from Walmart for next to nothing. A sun in every home. In all serio

I presume after the economy of scale kicks in, we'll be able to buy our own planets and suns from Walmart for next to nothing. A sun in every home. In all seriousness though, being able to print planets and suns, that is one of the craziest things I have ever heard.

evoxed 14y ago
It's a silly idea but at the same time not totally unrealistic if you assume that one, it's not something we could necessarily start today, two, it isn't a task that could be completed in any 'worthwhile' timeframe, and three, that the raw material for such a venture existed and could be harvested in some at-least-minimally efficient way. Once we have some sort of solution to the materials problem, it sure would be fun to throw out a couple of linked, self-replicating devices into space and check up on them in, oh, a thousand years or so. Hell, bury our best AI somewhere in the core and maybe by the time it's discovered we'll have a created the next Big Thing. I wonder how long it will be before machines can 'meditate' (usefully of course, hibernate doesn't count)...
hugi 14y ago
You don't think the Magratheans build their planets by hand, do you?
zanny 14y ago
The end game for 3d printing is assembling things at the molecular level to our design. Kind of how Star Trek had its food fabricators, just have carbon and have the machine rearrage and orient it to make food, add some h2o and other trace molecules, and bang you got a chicken leg. Or some ultra-nutrient-calorie dense superfood. If you can do that, making a planet is easy. Doesn't even require a printer - just dump a ton of iron, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc into a tight area of space and let them collapse together gravitationally, or just throw it in concentrated orbit around a star so they coalesce. I almost want to recind my original statement, because the real end game is manipulation of the most discrete components of matter, space, or reality. Right now its fundamental particles but who knows what else we may find. In usability terms though, crafting molecules seems like it would have the most benefit.

evoxed 14y ago

It's a silly idea but at the same time not totally unrealistic if you assume that one, it's not something we could necessarily start today, two, it isn't a task that could be completed in any 'worthwhile' timeframe, and three, that the raw material for such a venture existed and could be harvested in some at-least-minimally efficient way. Once we have some sort of solution to the materials problem, it sure would be fun to throw out a couple of linked, self-replicating devices into space and check up on them in, oh, a thousand years or so. Hell, bury our best AI somewhere in the core and maybe by the time it's discovered we'll have a created the next Big Thing. I wonder how long it will be before machines can 'meditate' (usefully of course, hibernate doesn't count)...

hugi 14y ago

You don't think the Magratheans build their planets by hand, do you?

zanny 14y ago

The end game for 3d printing is assembling things at the molecular level to our design. Kind of how Star Trek had its food fabricators, just have carbon and have the machine rearrage and orient it to make food, add some h2o and other trace molecules, and bang you got a chicken leg. Or some ultra-nutrient-calorie dense superfood. If you can do that, making a planet is easy. Doesn't even require a printer - just dump a ton of iron, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc into a tight area of space and let them collapse together gravitationally, or just throw it in concentrated orbit around a star so they coalesce. I almost want to recind my original statement, because the real end game is manipulation of the most discrete components of matter, space, or reality. Right now its fundamental particles but who knows what else we may find. In usability terms though, crafting molecules seems like it would have the most benefit.