Chapter category: Nanomedicine

CHAPTER 6 Motivations for Molecular-Scale Machine Replicator Design

This chapter appears in the following book:

Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines

Edited by: Robert A. Freitas, Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle
ISBN: 1-57059-690-5
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Chapter authors:
Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle

In 1959, Feynman2182 proposed that we could arrange atoms in most of the ways permitted by physical law. Von Neumann3 analyzed a few basic architectures for self-replicating systems in the 1940s and early 1950s, and several possible implementations of von Neumann’s kinematic replicators were described by Freitas and Gilbreath2 in the context of macroscale space-based manufacturing systems during a NASA study in 1980 (Section 3.13). In the early 1980s, Drexler197,199 proposed the molecular assembler — a nanoscale device able to rearrange atoms and to self-replicate — and subsequently analyzed the fundamental technical issues involved. 208 Following these and other early efforts in replication theory,200,201 the feasibility of building an artificial replicator and of molecular manufacturing has gradually come to be accepted although some still claim that artificial programmable self-replicating manufacturing systems that differ fundamentally from biological designs are impossible.13,14,3000 These and other claims of impossibility15,202- 206,2310 are poorly supported.16,17,207 After many decades of discussion and debate, no valid technical arguments against the feasibility of artificial replicators generally, or against the feasibility of molecular assemblers in particular, are known to the authors. By contrast, there are many proposals and analyses that support the feasibility of such systems.

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Additional chapters from this book:

APPENDIX B Design Notes on Some Aspects of the Merkle Freitas Molecular Assembler