# Potential Spectech Programs ### Theses * [[In order to turn space into a true frontier we need many technological revolutions]] * [[Materials and manufacturing underpin civilization]] * [[New manufacturing paradigms can remove bottlenecks for other paradigms]] * [[Dual use between space and not space]] * [[Non-human centric biology can unleash a new paradigm of physical technology]] * [[New simulation paradigms can unleash computing advances on the real world]] * For space, instead of finding the stuff you need to make things you should be able to make things out of stuff you find * [[Robust Technology]] - * [[Speculative Program Managers]] ### Programs Adding things to the top of the list * A teleoperate machine shop * [[Multimodal hierarchical simulations]] * [[Inverse design going from structure to manufacturing steps]] * [[Nitrates from air]] * Desalination? * Tunnel boring? * Robotic Welding? * Habitation domes? * [[Silicon-protein interfaces]] * Proteins are one of the few ways we know to design nanoscale structures with atomic precision. Silicon lithography enables us to interface between nanoscale (though not-quite atomically precise) structures and our entire technology stack (through digital and analog electronics). It should be possible to combining these two normally separate technological paradigms by embedding proteins in lithographic silicon features which could enable everything from novel sensors to adaptive materials to applications we can’t yet think of. * [[Designed serendipity program]] * There are a finite number of active technical researchers in the world, probably on the order 1E7 ([this](https://richardprice.io/post/12855561694/the-number-of-academics-and-graduate-students-in) rough estimate from 2011 puts the number at 5.16E7). I suspect the number of people who are doing high-quality, creative work is much lower. Despite the fact that there is tons of publicly available information (almost every academic lab has a website and many researchers publish papers) there is no way to know who they are and what they’re working on. **The Designed Serendipity program** will build an *open-source* *distributed* system that drastically reduces the *researcher-based* friction associated with combining pieces of knowledge. * [[Atomic Forges]] * Use Scanning Tunneling Electron Microscopes to deterministically knock single atoms out of 2D materials like graphene and replace them with dopants to create materials with completely new properties. * Self-replicating robots * Building a robot that can actually build itself from a pile of raw materials. Important both to bring down the cost of robotics and to * [[Low-cost compliant robot arms]] * In order to achieve human-level robotic performance, we need arms that are all of: cheap, precise, strong, and don’t punch a hole in anything they bump into. Currently, you can choose ~2 of those. * [[General purpose telerobotics]] * The ability to seamlessly act in the world through a robot anywhere in the world could enable everything from space manufacturing to vastly better utilized labs to improved eldercare. * [[Artificial ribosome]]s * At a high level, a ribosome is a reprogrammable tool that turns stochastic building blocks into a deterministic structure by choosing between forming *otherwise chemically equivalent* covalent bonds. If we could replicate this architecture with different building blocks and control systems, it could unlock an entirely new manufacturing paradigm. * [[Cryosleep]] * Reversibly slowing down body functions by orders of magnitude could enable effective faster-than-light travel, medical stasis, and other ‘time travel.’ * [[Nanomodular Electronics]] * 3D-printed integrated circuits can simultaneously enable space frontiers-people to create replacement parts out of native materials and both decouple a critical component of most modern products from multibillion dollar fabs that you can count on one hand and are located in places that could be invaded by China any day. * [[Artificial cells as (bio)reactors]] * Currently, chemical reactions are done in bulk and depend on everything in the tank coming to a new equilibrium. In the abstract cells are systems that maintain an out-of-equilibrium state separate from the environment. Artificial cells could enable multiple reactions to happen in parallel and more efficiently, potentially entirely new processes. * [[Spiroligomers for on demand/better catalysts]] * Spiroligomers are complex artificial polymers created from a set of easily-modeled, double-bonded, building blocks. If they can be manufactured rapidly, it may be possible to use them to create catalysts that can act in situations where proteins cannot and go after more targets than proteins (like toxins or the compound that causes wrinkles). * [[Fully autonomous optimized indoor farms]] * Indoor farms could potentially be absurdly more productive through a combination of labor-intensive multi-cropping, higher CO2 levels, electric currents, and other tricks. If you make the process fully autonomous, you could seal them off and send them to Mars. * [[Mars-capable plants]] * Evolution is powerful and we could potentially evolve plants for life on mars by slowly shifting their environment towards mars conditions. A system for massively parallelized selective breeding towards harsh conditions could equip us to deal with a climatically changing world as well. * [[Seamlessly scalable mammalian cell cultures]] * The ability to seamlessly scale up successful small-scale mammalian cell cultures could dramatically reduce the cost of everything from viral vectors to lab-grown animal products. Currently scaling involves essentially redoing almost all the small-scale experiments to find correct parameters at larger scales with no guarantee of success. * [[Artificial Muscles as Linear Actuators]] * Everybody thinks of lab-grown meat as food, but meat is just muscles and muscles are pretty incredible linear actuators. Would it be possible to create artificial muscles that act as high efficiency chemical-powered linear actuators? * [[Ceramic jet engines]] * Jet (and other) engines get more efficient when they run hotter. The limiting factor on engine temperatures is the fact that the metals that they’re made of melt. Ceramics melt at temperatures orders of magnitude higher than metals and it may be possible to make parts out of them. * [[Materials that emit at the transparency window of the atmosphere]] * If you had materials that emit only at the transparency window of the atmosphere you could fight global warming by coating large surfaces (like parking lots) with this material which would cause them to look no different to us but would reflect large amounts of solar energy back into space. * [[Autonomous design]]. * It may be possible to use modern machine learning to design physical tools/systems in areas where human intuition (and thus our ability to design things) is severely limited. Additionally, many designs were created around manufacturing constraints, but drastically improved CNC and additive manufacturing technology has made it so that we can actually build bizarre designs that computers create. This has already been demonstrated for some engine parts and radar antenna. * [[Autonomous design might be necessary in domains where we have no human intuition]] * Better simulations * Reliable simulations are blockers for several key technologies including a lot of nanotechnology and fusion power. * Nuclear Batteries * Nuclear batteries with sufficient power density could enable cordless electronics that never need to be recharged. * [[Atmospheric carbon to jet fuel demonstrator]] * If you could demonstrate a plant that turned atmospheric carbon into jet fuel at a low enough price point, you could kick off a race to build these things. * Laser powered airplanes * It should be possible to power an electric airplane with a series of extremely precise ground-based laser stations, removing the weight-range tradeoff associated with batteries. Also useful on Mars where the main source of power is solar. * [[Isothermal compression and expansion compressors]] * ### Possible Gems * [[Georgia Tech blimp can’t find commercial use case]] * [[Nuclear Batteries]] * [[Muon catalyzed fusion may be extremely underrated]] ### Other * [[Low profile broadband sound absorbtion]] * [[Nanobots in people]] ## Related * [[PARPA Partners]] <!-- #list #project/spectech/programs #!Top-of-Mind --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Potential+Spectech+Programs) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Potential+Spectech+Programs)