Редактирование: Molecular Manufacturing (раздел)

= Overview =

Molecular Manufacturing is the construction of atomically-precise macroscale products. It does ''not'' require the manufacturing process to be computer-controlled at every step or to handle atoms individually, nor does it require the chemical processes to be limited to mechanosynthesis; only the finished product must be machine-phase.

[[File:Nanofactory.jpg|thumb|left|A tabletop nanofactory based on exponential assembly.]]

Molecular Manufacturing is often used a synonym of [[#(Molecular) Nanotechnology|Molecular Nanotechnology]], the vision of nanotechnology started by [[Eric Drexler]] and further explored by [[Ralph Merkle]], [[Robert Freitas]] and [[Zyvex]]. While Molecular Nanotechnology is centered around a variety of (Diamond-based) molecular machines, from the Drexler Arm (A setting in which one of these builds a copy of itself is pictured below) to the [[Respirocyte]] to the [[Molecular Machinery#Neon Pump|Neon Pump]], manufacturing is a more global process, that concerns itself with such machines and with more global objectives, such as cheap, distributed manufacturing technologies, which is why 'molecular manufacturing' is the preferred name for this article.

{| border=1 class=wikitable align=right
! colspan=4 | '''Scales of the Universe'''
|-
| Prefix || colspan=2 | Value || Name
|-
| exa- || 10<sup>18</sup>m || 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 || quintillion
|-
| peta- || 10<sup>15</sup>m || 1,000,000,000,000,000 || quadrillion
|-
| tera- || 10<sup>12</sup>m || 1,000,000,000,000 || trillion
|-
| giga- || 10<sup>9</sup>m || 1,000,000,000 || billion
|-
| mega- || 10<sup>6</sup>m || 1,000,000 || million
|-
| kilo- || 10<sup>3</sup>m || 1,000 || thousand
|-
| milli- || 10<sup>-3</sup>m || 1/1,000 || thousandth
|-
| micro- || 10<sup>-8</sup>m || 1/1,000,000 || millionth
|-
| '''nano-''' || '''10<sup>-9</sup>m''' || '''1/1,000,000,000''' || '''billionth'''
|-
| pico- || 10<sup>-12</sup>m || 1/1,000,000,000,000 || trillionth
|-
| femto- || 10<sup>-15</sup>m || 1/1,000,000,000,000,000 || quadrillionth
|-
| atto- || 10<sup>-18</sup>m || 1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000 || quintillionth
|}

Nanotechnology, in general, is the art of building practical, complex machinery with sizes varying from 100 to 1 nanometers. Nanoscience and nanotechnology are new names for the gradually, naturally extended discipline of chemistry; and so nanoscience should not be confused with the much more specific field of Molecular Nanotechnology. The machines and processes shown in this article are not filling journals or being made daily in laboratories.

How small are atoms really? Kenneth Ford says,

<blockquote>''"To arrive at the number of atoms in a cubic centimeter of water (a few drops), first cover the earth with airports, one against the other. Then go up a mile or so and build another solid layer of airports. Do this 100 million times. The last layer will have reached out to the sun and will contain some 1016 airports (ten million billion). The number of atoms in a few drops of water will be the number of airports filling up this substantial part of the solar system. If the airport construction rate were one million each second, the job could just have been finished in the known lifetime of the universe (something over ten billion years)."<ref>Kenneth W. Ford, "The Large and the Small," in Timothy Ferris, ed., The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991), 22. First published in ''Kenneth W. Ford, The World of Elementary Particles'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).</ref>
</blockquote>