Nano-nomads

From Wise Nano

I want to have a little fun with this project. Assume that you have a primitive nano-factory and a good CAD program, the goal is to come up some preliminary designs for all the necessary artifacts of Nano-nomadic lifestyle. Designs will be evaluated for Portability, energy efficiency, comfort, ease of use, environmental impact and style.

How do you get around?

Flying devices such as a Light Laminar Lifter

Walking

20th century style public transportation

Space elevators

Laser propelled space-craft

Solar Sailing and plasma sailing

Alumina scramjets

How do you get and store energy? Solar energy stored as H2 and released by fuel cells, or solar energy stored as mechanical spinning flywheels. All paved surfaces make good places to put solar cells. Semi-transparent solar cells over desert regions of the oceans are another option. These can be albedo matched to the oceans to avoid global warming.

How do you get food? Purchase it from stores where it was purchased from farmers in exchange for intrinsically rare elements, or for credit if the current credit system lasts, or for heat emission credits. Grow it yourself, or synthesize basic fatty acids, amino acids and carbohydrates and feed them to animals. Own automated greenhouses which are manufactured with MNT. These can be relatively light, and could be carried by large flying devices, or by legs or wheels. Microwaves and heat are rather easily manipulated and controlled with MNT, and containers are easily created and cleaned. Waste heat should be abundant for cooking if one wishes to be energy efficient. Nano precise machines should be especially capable of rapidly cutting and blending foods, with the option of cooking the food while it is blended. Sanitation can be extremely good, with vacuum packaging, irradiation, and refrigeration of food whenever desired.

What are you doing with your waste? Energy is abundant, so most waste can be incinerated. Alternatively, it can be re-cycled mechanochemically. Nano-scale waste products may be rare, and can be kept out of your body with inconspicuous nano-constructued filters. If nano-scale waste products are common, they can be made biodegradable.

What is your home like? A simple bed designed in the style of a not-very sophisticated utility fog can be very portable, as can an air-tight durable bubble and oxygen recyclers. Add phased array optics to provide an inconspicuous appearence and to allow you a nice view and there is little need for anything more to constitute a home. A nanofactory might be a somewhat larger personal posession, but can prehaps be carried by a robot. Personal sanitation is prehaps more difficult. Fabrics can easily be self-cleaning, but how to make a cleaner nanodevice that sticks to your skin but isn't itself dirt. The best solution may be to use active clothes capable of scrubbing the body. Water for cleaning can be re-captured and filtered or dispersed into mist and re-condensed. Advanced MNT might replace the epidermis entirely with something more durable which served the same functions and also provided better protection from microbes and nanomachines. This could easily be self-cleaning, and if it didn't consist of cells with short lives much less cleaning would be needed and much less dust created.