Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Secret Project: The Nano Factory

[McSqueaky]

I always felt that the effect of this project in the game was waaaay too weak for what the theoretical science behind it would provide us with.

[PyroDesu]

*Cough, cough* So long as you don't program them to make more of themselves with the same programming..... Grey Goo, anyone?

[hagamablabla]

@PyroDesu Great game. Both this one and that one.

[SmallWhiteCube]

Now that's an outcome I enjoy seeing. We trade morals, lives, anything, for efficiency. But maybe that's just me

[moksheebs]

i need that.

[Kemonokami]

Something tells me that if Nanites become intelligent, they'll start making aesthetic and functional modifications to the products they were meant to build because they thought we had poor taste. A good example is if they decide to give a toaster a flamethrower and hydraulics because they thought it would make it cooler.

[WholesomeBurn]

Take a small step back? Did you see that? They tore apart a guy! Ide be running my ass out of there!

[LithuanianLabas]

What I want to know is what happens if you forget the programming chip. Or if you put on in that tells it to make more copies of itself.

[Ander01SE]

@LithuanianLabas

And that's why Gene manipulation is bad. Most people can't write a page of binary code that's free from bugs. And they think it's safe to play around with DNA strings containing 4 elements. O_o

[frederikIII]

okay this superweapon scares me just imagine if it was real ? if anyone could just create equipment for a betallion in under a day ? i would say eternal war

[justicetrooper]

@frederikIII  depends on how expensive the nanofactory was.

[SusCalvin]

@frederikIII Or it could be used to construct edible food out of compost. Or eat chemical spills. Technology isn't evil, people make the evil happen. Generally, the benefits of a technological society outweigh the risks.

[frederikIII]

@SusCalvin technology itself dosent scares me its just the fact if this kind of power where to be put in the wrong hand like a terroist group and all they had to do is to push a few button and wait few mins and you get tanks, guns and armor enough to start your own war against a nation if you have the man power for it

[SusCalvin]

@frederikIII Got a problem with mass production? :) We're already waist deep in small arms around the globe, that is not a new problem.

[frederikIII]

@SusCalvin its more in what you mass produce but your right there is billions of small arms out in the world unlike this one wich is more mobile shall we say?

[SusCalvin]

@frederikIII I still find it hard blaming a method of production for the existence of small arms. Lots of tech in AC is moving towards post-singularity stuff.

[SusCalvin]

@frederikIII You still need raw materials. And as far as we can tell right now, it won't be instantly constructed tanks. That we can do cheaper with a regular large-scale factory. Small, minute things we have problem with now. Neurosurgery, electronics and other small-scale precision works.

[gyrobotZ]

@frederikIII

You still need resources to construct Nanobots, nanopaste is useless if your stuff can't break them down fast enough or at least be able to be carried around safely. You need a program to run these things.

[Carpathia25]

Those dead bodies are useless, let's make a hovertank or a small factory out of them!

[Solenor92]

One word: Badass

[Skinnyoompalumpa]

lets hope we humans get this technology

[Qloos1]

Lets not.

[Arakhor]

That is as scary as hell, particularly at 0.20 :(

[PantsuGirl]

Thats what i call recycling.

[PyroDesu]

agreed

[SZenithLee]

I may be nitpicking, but...

"or enough impact rifles to equip a regiment."

I would think that one should have been WAY passed impact-weaponry when he has reached Nanorobotics in the tech tree.

[pimpinseacow]

@SZenithLee haha I always thought the same

[Valkyriefury]

Yeah, but that was for large arms. Perhaps it took all the way up until anti gravity technology before they could miniaturize it to rifle form.

[kingsman565]

I'm shure DARPA is working on this right now.

[colonist067]

Everyone dives into the pool then moments later they came out as assault rifles.

[Valkyriefury]

That's ridiculous, a high carbon content like that makes you more suited for plastic materials.

[PyroDesu]

how do you know that it isn't using the "plastic materials" to make that stuff? composite armors today use plastic to some degree!

[TomeOfBattle]

@colonist067 The part where the nano recycles that human hand is just creepy. Think of it, that trigger could have once been part of your fellow soldier. Brass doesn't care. As usual.

[Shack11]

So what they're saying is this.

Buy some paste. Get some sticks, rocks, and all of your spare metal, and burn it.

You now have an army.

That's freaking awesome.

[Nightshift10000]

Or all the weapons you'll need to equip your army, which is still pretty cool.

[Gruegirl]

nitpick time! Impact rifle infantry are MUCH MUCH cheaper and VERY obsulete by the time either hovertanks or this sproject is made. so more like enough impact rifles to equipt your WHOLE army.

[aekhoo]

I think she's actually referring to small arms augmented by impact weapon technology gained by researching Nonlinear Mathematics. Daium. I am DEFINITELY not letting anyone get this project ahead of me.

[PantsuGirl]

@Shack11 Wonder what Green Peace would say about it...

[Kemonokami]

@Shack11

That's how video game crafting works: Nanites.

[LichtAmEndeDesSargs]

how did you rip all these alpha centauri vids? or is there a special programm to convert all the *.wve ?

[matsku84]

HCl's Wing commander Movie Player

[animerox1341]

IMO? One of the most potentially frightening concepts in the world is nano machines.

[00bean00]

The concept can only be realized in "soft" science fiction. I think the problem with "nanomachines" is thermal energy---at the nanometer scale, the kinetic energy of the constituent parts would render them useless. Ask your neighborhood physicist about them!

[RojOdio]

An easier way to explain them as being quite useless in open areas is by surface area.

Get a block of wood. Set it on fire. It will take quite a while for the whole thing to burn out.

Get a pile of sawdust (which take the place of a nano-bot swarm) light it on fire and it will go up in flames in a second. They have a greater surface area and as such, the fire gets them and burns them up faster.

Or at least, thats how I understood it from out science experiments.

[velation]

That was one kick ass game.

[FartheadOgre]

I knew the government was up to something....damn you fox news!!

[lookn4thepowpow]

In real life it's already started in the X-23Z project, using morphing metal to reseal damage to aircraft, some videos on this site show helicopters appearing to change shape don't know about that but, increasing the structurial breaking point is plausible.

[dude846]

Science Fiction will only stay fiction until someone figures the science behind it.

[Emmanovi]

Did someone once say that there's no such thing as Science Fiction, only Science Future?

[Jurjenjans83]

For the sake of humanity I hope most of it remains fiction. Still it's a very nice saying. ;)

[Kizor]

Probably, but if someone did, he or she had never seen all the 1930s green-skinned space babes whispering "show me more of this Earth thing you call love."

[popecorkyxxiv]

Technically if your talking about sub-atomic recombination, there would be no heat or entropy, not at that scale. You could literaly disassemble human feces and put it back together as pure gold. Or alter the cellular and genetic patterns of a human to create a Homo-Superior (ultimate man/machine hybrid)

[ogicabp4u]

why not the other way round? Why not turn gold into human feces?

[spartan289]

At any rate, such an invention would be bad-ass... like the holy-grail of environmental scientists. The only question is, "is it possible?"

[DoctorFist]

that's nanotechnology for you, and i'm going into that stream! i'm so excited :)

[cosmos3311]

This is one of my favorite videos from a terrific game. Imagine if we could do this in real life!

[matsku84]

Yeah! Like everything could be recycled with 100 percent efficency!

[justicetrooper]

Recycled into what is also an important part.

[HK47Beta]

Not 100 percent efficiency. There would still be energy lossed to heat and just general entropy.

More like 99.999%.

[matsku84]

99.999999999999% or 100%, who cares (maybe some sad physics geek :D) as long as it's a lot better than now.

[SusCalvin]

@matsku84 100% and 99.99% is the fine line between the finite energy of today (even if plentiful) and the infinite energy of a perpetuum mobile.

[patchhacker]

@HK47Beta Planet rounds up.

[DingusMcFlabbergasty]

@HK47Beta Spoken like a true geek. :)

[ImNotBored]

WTF?? anyways.. 1st!

[matsku84]

You might consider removing "Not" from your nick =D!