A wind turbine can pay for itself in less than a year

Originally posted by humy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze

OK, so it is still used for some, not most, important things. But that will obviously not last when ultra-cheap ways of manufacturing silicon nitride, carbon fibre composites etc are invented because, for a given application, these lightweight materials can outperform bronze in every way includin ...[text shortened]... You have to prove that it is so. [/quote]
No I don't -because that isn't quite what I claim.

But that will obviously not last when ultra-cheap ways of manufacturing silicon nitride, carbon fibre composites etc are invented ....

Ok, here is my beef. In bold. .... WHEN.

The word is IF, not when.


If we find a way of getting unicorns to crap fully formed buildings from their ass then buildings
will become incredibly cheap.

But it isn't going to happen.

My problem with your posts [almost always] is how wildly optimistic you are about what we
can and do know about future technologies and economics.



Also, you missed my point about 'nanites'.

Enzymes ARE nanites. They are nanoscopic molecular machines.
If you are making artificial enzymes to build stuff then you are building stuff with nanites.

I mean lets look at Nitrogen as an example of one of my problems with your arguments...
[actually you are not making arguments, you are asserting a vision of the future with no
evidence or argument to convince me it's actually valid]...

The Nitrogen triple-bond is incredibly strong, and thus it takes a huge amount of energy to
break it, and convert N2 into some usable compound.

Nitrogen is incredibly useful, not least as fertiliser for the worlds crops.

Now we used to get nitrogen into the soil with nitrogen fixing plants which have bacteria symbiotically
growing on their roots which convert N2 from the air into usable nitrogen compounds.
Some of which gets left in the soil when the plant dies/is harvested at the end of the season.
Which is why crop rotation was invented, so that nitrogen fixers were used to improve the soil for
the crops that don't have this benefit.

But crop rotation isn't good enough for the intensive farming needed to feed the worlds huge and growing
population.

So we artificially extract Nitrogen from the air in the Haber process.

On which 1% of the worlds total energy is expended. [in a small number of plants around the world]

Now we are currently looking at genetically engineering nitrogen fixing bacteria into all our crops,
and thus removing the need for all the fertiliser, and saving vast amounts of energy and pollution.

BUT.

This nitrogen fixing by enzymes in bacteria, is very very slow. It will take bacteria in the root systems
of every crop plant in the world to replace the output of a few [relatively speaking] tiny industrial complexes.


And this is my problem with "we can build stuff super cheaply with enzymes/nanites".

Sure... if you want it to take 50 times longer in a plant 1000 times the size.

The trade-off for splitting nitrogen at room temp and atmospheric pressure as opposed to 700C and a thousand atm
is that the process is much much much slower, and needs vastly larger volume.

Ceramics, and super-tough alloys and such, are strong because they have strong bonds.
It takes energy to transform the initial materials into these forms, usually lots of energy.

And you might get an enzyme to do it... but it will do it very slowly.


Enzymes/bacteria are awesome if you want to make organic compounds, like medicines.

They suck if you want to make armour plating.

Originally posted by googlefudge

But that will obviously not last [b]when ultra-cheap ways of manufacturing silicon nitride, carbon fibre composites etc are invented ....

Ok, here is my beef. In bold. .... WHEN.

The word is IF, not when.


If we find a way of getting unicorns to crap fully formed buildings from their ass then buildings
will become incre ...[text shortened]... want to make organic compounds, like medicines.

They suck if you want to make armour plating.[/b]

Ok, here is my beef. In bold. .... WHEN.

Yes, that is exactly what I said and been saying all the long; “eventually”, “one day”, “when” etc.

Enzymes ARE nanites. They are nanoscopic molecular machines.

That is not really what that words means in normal usage.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nanite
noun
nanobot.
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/nanomachine-nanite
“...A nanomachine, also called a nanite, is a mechanical or electromechanical device whose dimensions are measured in nanometers ...”
So far I haven’t found a single definition of an enzyme that defines it as a 'nanite' although there might be a crackpot website somewhere that says it is.

If you are making artificial enzymes to build stuff then you are building stuff with nanites.

No, I would be building stuff with the help of enzymes which may be very much like natural enzymes that are not called nanites in every day language.

This nitrogen fixing by enzymes in bacteria, is very very slow.

why would we NEED to fix nitrogen (from the atmosphere ) in the far future if we can more cheaply just continually recycle it over and over again from waste organic matter and waste materials? Once enough of it has been fixed, it can be endlessly recycled practically forever.

And you might get an enzyme to do it... but it will do it very slowly.

In the far future, what would be the huge hurry in manufacturing something if you are prepared to start manufacturing each item say, two years before you want it for use? That wouldn't mean having to patiently wait for your wanted item because it would have always been made for you say, at least two years earlier. A tree takes more than two years to grow; this hasn't stopped us using timber from sustainable forestry and hasn't kept people waiting for timber -the reason? Trees are planted many years before they are harvested. Why cannot future manufacturing be like that? How long it takes will not be the critical fact; how cheaply it can be made would be.

Enzymes/bacteria are awesome if you want to make organic compounds, like medicines.

They suck if you want to make armour plating.

No, consider the bone in armadillo plates: just like in all bone, the inorganic calcium phosphate in bone is synthesized with the help of enzymes so, in the far future, why cannot artificial enzymes be made for making inorganic material (either calcium phosphate or some other substance ) for armored plating? If nature can do it, why cannot we do it artificially? Just like with bone, it would take time to grow but, so what? what it the big hurry when we can simply start manufacturing each item much earlier before we need/want it?

Originally posted by humy

Ok, here is my beef. In bold. .... WHEN.

Yes, that is exactly what I said and been saying all the long; “eventually”, “one day”, “when” etc.

Enzymes ARE nanites. They are nanoscopic molecular machines.

That is not really what that words means in normal usage.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nanite
noun
n ...[text shortened]... big hurry when we can simply start manufacturing each item much earlier before we need/want it?

Ok, here is my beef. In bold. .... WHEN.
Yes, that is exactly what I said and been saying all the long; “eventually”, “one day”, “when” etc.

You missed my next sentence so here it is again.

The word is IF not when.


You have not demonstrated to me that what you are saying is possible or or economic.

You are asserting it.

I am disagreeing.

Asserting it over and over again is not getting us anywhere.

Forget everything else, and focus on this.

I am not accepting your assertions that this WILL happen, and that these technologies
WILL be invented and be cheaper ect ect.

They MIGHT, possibly.

But you are asserting that they will, and I want you to prove it.

Till then it's IF and not WHEN.


Otherwise it's like someone saying "In the future when we have invented FTL travel..."

Um-no. IF we invent FTL travel which will be both IF it's possible and IF it's practical/economic.


You are claiming super-efficiency and low cost for technologies not invented yet.

You have not yet convinced me THAT they will be invented, let alone that they will be cheaper and
easier than anything else.



I have a whole bunch of other issues but lets stick with just one for the moment rather than going
20 different ways all at once.

Originally posted by humy

Ok, here is my beef. In bold. .... WHEN.

Yes, that is exactly what I said and been saying all the long; “eventually”, “one day”, “when” etc.

Enzymes ARE nanites. They are nanoscopic molecular machines.

That is not really what that words means in normal usage.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nanite
noun
n ...[text shortened]... big hurry when we can simply start manufacturing each item much earlier before we need/want it?

No, consider the bone in armadillo plates:

Sure. you build your tank out of bone and I will build mine out of steel and we can see which works best...

I refer you to my earlier quote...

Either way, the popularity of the organic technology myth is somewhat baffling. One of the most baffling parts is the fact that it is assumed to be more "advanced". Here's a question for you: when did we produce the first armoured vehicle? Was it in World War 1, with the tank? Or was it centuries earlier, with the mounted knight? Did you know that the mounted knight was made possible through selective horse breeding (ie- organic technology), which produced horses big and strong enough to carry the heavy armoured riders into battle? Do you believe that sheepdogs were always like that? Dogs and horses could both be described as examples of bio-technological tools, engineered by humans for specific tasks through the use of applied evolutionary scientific principles (even if they didn't have a name for them at the time). Bio-weapons are nothing new either, having been used since at least medieval times (besieging armies would catapult diseased carcasses into a fortress). And what about bio-armour? Sorry, but all I can say is "been there, done that". Wooden ships had bio-armour, remember? Would you seriously want to pit bio-armour against the 120mm smoothbore gun of an M-1 Abrams? There is a reason we switched to steel, people! Think about it.

Originally posted by googlefudge

No, consider the bone in armadillo plates:

Sure. you build your tank out of bone and I will build mine out of steel and we can see which works best...

I refer you to my earlier quote...

Either way, the popularity of the organic technology myth is somewhat baffling. One of the most baffling parts is the fact that it is assu ...[text shortened]... e gun of an M-1 Abrams? There is a reason we switched to steel, people! Think about it.

Sure. you build your tank out of bone and I will build mine out of steel

oh right -so you where talking about armoured plate for the military and not, say, for protecting a satellite from micrometeors. Not a useful application then. I don't think it matters what military armoured plating is made of in the far future -humanity would not benefit from better weapons. I also assume that most people would not have their own tanks and I never would so I don't care about what military armoured plating is made of. BUT, if I DID care, I will choose it to be made of something like silicon nitride and multiwalled carbon nanotube composite material (silicon nitride for compression strength and multiwalled carbon nanotubes for tensile strength ) because such a thing can be made to be both stronger and lighter than steel -better in every way to steel to give you protection in your tank! Why would you think nothing can be better than steel for this? Weight for weight, it isn't the strongest material after all!
And, given enzymes help make bone in nature, I see no reason why these ceramic composites cannot be made with the aid of enzymes especially artificially designed for this purpose.

Originally posted by humy

Sure. you build your tank out of bone and I will build mine out of steel

oh right -so you where talking about armoured plate for the military and not, say, for protecting a satellite from micrometeors. Not a useful application then. I don't think it matters what military armoured plating is made of in the far future -humanity would not be ...[text shortened]... osites cannot be made with the aid of enzymes especially artificially designed for this purpose.

You are failing to grasp pretty much every single one of my points.

Whether that's because I am being unclear or not I don't know but you are not
seeing the points I am making and you are misunderstanding pretty nearly
everything I am saying.

So lets start again.


First off I want to verify I have your position correct, so I am going to say what I
think you are saying, and I would like you to confirm if I have this correctly and
clarify if I get your position wrong.


You believe that at some unspecified point in the future, we will be able to make
all kinds of exotic [by today's standards] materials with far superior properties to
the materials we use today [metals/steel in particular] incredibly cheaply and
efficiently using modified enzymes to manufacture the materials/objects.

And the abundance of cheap 'super-materials' will cause us to cease to use many
of the materials we use today, including practically all metal use.


Is that correct?

Originally posted by googlefudge
You are failing to grasp pretty much every single one of my points.

Whether that's because I am being unclear or not I don't know but you are not
seeing the points I am making and you are misunderstanding pretty nearly
everything I am saying.

So lets start again.


First off I want to verify I have your position correct, so I am going to say ...[text shortened]... many
of the materials we use today, including practically all metal use.


Is that correct?

You believe that at some unspecified point in the future, we will be able to make
all kinds of exotic [by today's standards] materials with far superior properties to
the materials we use today [metals/steel in particular] incredibly cheaply and
efficiently using modified enzymes to manufacture the materials/objects.

correct although I think they should be called “designed enzymes” rather than “modified enzymes” and note that I am specifically refering to metals/steels in metallic form i.e. either pure or in alloys.

And the abundance of cheap 'super-materials' will cause us to cease to use many
of the materials we use today, including practically all metal use.

metal use as in metal in metallic form, yes. But the metal elements will still be used because they are bound to be useful chemically combined with other chemical elements in ceramics etc. Also, there are going to be a few minor exceptions where there is no other material better for the job other than metal in metallic form. Examples: steel lightning rods; lithium or magnesium in batteries. In the case of that steel, it could be made using enzymes in anaerobic conditions. Lithium might be to reactive for that.

Originally posted by humy

You believe that at some unspecified point in the future, we will be able to make
all kinds of exotic [by today's standards] materials with far superior properties to
the materials we use today [metals/steel in particular] incredibly cheaply and
efficiently using modified enzymes to manufacture the materials/objects.

correct althoug ...[text shortened]... , it could be made using enzymes in anaerobic conditions. Lithium might be to reactive for that.

Right, great. So I'm understanding your position...

Now lets see if I can get you to understand [if not agree with] mine.

Ok first I am going to revisit my example of Nitrogen production.

Now as I said, nitrogen is an incredibly important element, used in many different
products [including the vast majority of explosives] and is a vital element for
life.

So we artificially extract Nitrogen from the air in the Haber process.

On which 1% of the worlds total energy is expended. [in a small number of plants
around the world]

The majority of the nitrogen in your body, will have been fixed from the air by the
Haber process as the vast bulk of the fertilisers used to grow our food comes from
this process, and it is this process that allows us to feed the growing world population.

But it has downsides, the dead-zones in the oceans caused by nitrogen fertiliser run-off
are one example.

And so we are looking to genetically engineer all crop plants to have the nitrogen fixing
bacteria in nodules on their roots like Beans and other nitrogen fixing legumes have.

This is a good, no, awesome thing. [If/when it's acheived, the anti-GM crowed not helping
here]

You seemed to think I thought this was a bad thing, I don't, I think this is a great application
of the kind of technologies you are talking about.

BUT.

The bacteria fixing the nitrogen will be making that nitrogen in the roots of every crop plant
around the world. So we have gone from making the entire worlds supply in a few concentrated
factories, to needing the entire agricultural land area of the planet to do the same job.

Now in this instance this is not a problem, it's actually a better solution than our current one [if
we can make it work].


But my point, that you missed last time, is that the 'enzyme technology' is taking a huge
proportion of the surface of the planet to do what we can do in a few chemical plants with
current technology. This is OK in this case because we are fitting the technology in to what
is already in those areas, the crop plants we need for our food.
But this isn't the case for other applications. All our other nitrogen needs are still going to come
from the Haber Process. Because we don't have the land area to spare to make the nitrogen we
need using enzymes.



Lets look at another simple example which illustrates my problem with your proposal.


We have company A and company B who both make frying pans.

Company A makes cast steel frying-pans. Using current technology.

Company B makes equivalent frying-pans out of whatever material you believe future frying pans
are going to be made of, manufactured using "designed enzymes".

Company A has 50 casts into which it pours the molten steel, which cools in 25 minutes and
then is reset, so each cast produces 1 frying pan per 30 minutes, for a total production of 100 per hour,
or 876,000 per year.

Company B makes it's pans using enzymes, which slowly deposit the material down in an incredibly
thin layer in some sort of mould [or however it's supposed to work]. this process takes a month
[and I am being very generous here as I will explain later] and so each mould produces 12 pans
per year.
So to compete with the finishing capacity of company A, company B needs 73,000 moulds to make
the same number of frying-pans.

Assuming that you need 5 square meters of factory space per mould, the factory for company B has
a footprint of 365,000 square meters, or 1,460 times the 250 sqr meters needed for the factory of
company A.

And this problem applies to every single product you make like this. So you just multiplied the
required factory space for our industrial complex by a factor of ~1,500.


But it's worse than that.


Because I have no earthly clue how you are going to possibly ever achieve even that.

You are using enzymes here as molecular machines to carry out tasks. Which is functionally identical to
what nanites are supposed to be, which is why I called them nanites.

Whether you want to call them that or not, the problems you have are identical.


Lets say you want to make a nuclear submarine.

To do this you need to make 24inch Titanium alloy [or equivalent] outer hull, which is capable of withstanding
1000+ atm pressure differential.

It has to be built to exacting tolerances, with micrometer precision and exact ratios of the elements in the alloys.

Obviously any defect would be catastrophic.

To use enzymes to build this, you are going to have to have trillions upon trillions of enzymes working in perfect
synchrony to assemble the big titanium alloy [or material of your choice] plates.

I don't believe this is possible, let alone practical.

You will get your nanobots, because that is what you are talking about, leaving cavities, faults, burying their fellow
nanobots inside the plate... ect ect. they will get the alloy mix wrong, they will be damaged, hit by stray radiation
and I don't know how you ever get them to all work together in the first place.

And even after all that they are incredibly slow.

Without the high energy needed to melt titanium alloy and cast the plates, you have to assemble the plate atom by atom,
with an incredibly thin shell of 'enzymes' over the surface of the growing plate, building it up a layer of atoms at a time.


You're not looking at casting the plates over months, you are looking at growing them over 50 years.

And still not matching the quality of the cast plates.

The customer isn't going to wait that long.



Now maybe you believe that these very real problems are solvable.

But I don't.

And to change my mind you need to explain how it is that these problems can be solved.

And I don't see how you can do that when the required technologies have not been [by your own admission] invented yet.



You gave the example of bone as a demonstration of what this kind of technology can do, and I think you are right.

In the field of medicine I think this technology has a great future.

But bone is a collection of biological cells which require constant supplies of nutrients with calcium deposits caked
haphazardly around the supporting cell structures.

It looks nothing whatsoever like the steel plates you are looking to replace.


To me you are hand-waiving away these problems as either not existing or as something that we will solve.

I don't know that they can be.

And I am even less convinced that they can be solved sufficiently that this becomes the dominant manufacturing technology
replacing almost all others.


I also don't believe it's [necessarily] more energy efficient for the applications you are looking at.

It takes energy to make and repair enzymes, and while the manufacturing is less energy intense, it takes much much longer.

I would expect many of the applications you are talking about to net use more energy.


Even with the nitrogen fixing in plants.

It may very well be the case [although I don't have the numbers to check] that all the bacteria in the roots will use
the same or even more energy than the Haber process does. But they are getting that energy from the sun, and it's
spread out ever half the worlds land area so you don't notice the energy usage so much.
But it fundamentally still takes the same amount of energy to crack nitrogen triple bonds whether you are doing it
with an enzyme or in a pressure vessel.

Sorry for the wall of text. But I wanted to make my points clear.
So I included lots of redundant examples in the hope that if one isn't
clear another might be.

Originally posted by humy

You believe that at some unspecified point in the future, we will be able to make
all kinds of exotic [by today's standards] materials with far superior properties to
the materials we use today [metals/steel in particular] incredibly cheaply and
efficiently using modified enzymes to manufacture the materials/objects.

correct althoug ...[text shortened]... , it could be made using enzymes in anaerobic conditions. Lithium might be to reactive for that.

Entertainingly, I think lithium in batteries is probably one of the things that we might
largely phase out and replace with cheaper/safer organic flow batteries.

But that's an irrelevant aside, if an amusing one.

Originally posted by googlefudge

But that will obviously not last [b]when ultra-cheap ways of manufacturing silicon nitride, carbon fibre composites etc are invented ....

Ok, here is my beef. In bold. .... WHEN.

The word is IF, not when.


If we find a way of getting unicorns to crap fully formed buildings from their ass then buildings
will become incre ...[text shortened]... want to make organic compounds, like medicines.

They suck if you want to make armour plating.[/b]

Now we are currently looking at genetically engineering nitrogen fixing bacteria into all our crops...

Are they talking about engineering the crops, or the bacteria? I'm not excited about either prospect. But I'm a lot less unhappy with the concept of GMing the plant than the bacteria. My main concern with GM is biological containment which you can forget with a bacteria, but with the crop they can at least prevent it from generating pollen, and so contaminating wild species.

An application I approve of with GM is modified yeast for making insulin. The process happens in brewing vats, so the yeast is contained. I just thought I'd mention that so I don't sound like a complete Luddite.

Incidentally - I don't agree that GM is needed to feed "an increasing world population". It is straightforward to stop the world's population from increasing. The reason people have large families is so at least one of their children will look after them when they are old - where there are reasonable pensions they tend to only have two or three children.

Originally posted by DeepThought

Now we are currently looking at genetically engineering nitrogen fixing bacteria into all our crops...

Are they talking about engineering the crops, or the bacteria? I'm not excited about either prospect. But I'm a lot less unhappy with the concept of GMing the plant than the bacteria. My main concern with GM is biological containment wh ...[text shortened]... they are old - where there are reasonable pensions they tend to only have two or three children.

This is a totally different topic, so if you really want to discuss it I suggest
creating a new thread otherwise this threads going to be unintelligible.

But if [and we should and probably will] we get everyone in the world up to
the basic minimum access to healthcare and education then the birth rate
will fall to about replacement levels.

And the population will increase to around 11 billion.

Because we are already at about 'peak child' with around 2 billion children
on the planet.

But with the rapid population growth we have had up until this point, we don't
have 2 billion in all of the age groups above that.

As time passes we will maintain about 2 billion children, but we will gain more old people
as they grow up and then grow old.

Without some great catastrophe we are locked in to a population of about 11 billion [+/- 1 billion.]

And given that we spend about 1% of the worlds energy making the nitrogen needed to
feed the CURRENT world population, then modifying plants to be nitrogen fixers and
thus save us the need and pollution of fertiliser is a huge step forwards. Quite apart from
all the other benefits.

But as I say that's a whole other topic, and I would like to stay at least vaguely on the one
topic in this thread.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Entertainingly, I think lithium in batteries is probably one of the things that we might
largely phase out and replace with cheaper/safer organic flow batteries.

But that's an irrelevant aside, if an amusing one.

not if you want maximum energy density in terms of specific energy (which is joules stored per Kg as opposed to joules per litre ) . The specific energy is critical to many applications including a battery powered car -assuming you don't use a fuel cell, you wouldn't want to replace your car battery with a less energy dense and more cumbersome heavier organic one!

However, lithium is expensive which is why I mentioned magnesium -the most energy dense magnesium-sulfur battery possible (theoretical upper limit; ~6 MJ/kg. practical limit perhaps ~3 MJ/kg? ) , although lower than the most energy dense lithium-sulfur battery (theoretical upper limit; 9.4 MJ/kg. practical limit perhaps ~4.7 MJ/kg? ), would still have more than adequate energy density for, say, an electric car, but with the magnesium being relatively cheap and thus the battery would be cheap.

I also wouldn't rule out the common use (in the far future ) of organic flow batteries for stationary off-the-grid energy storage since, for that particular application, the specific energy is pretty much irrelevant.

Originally posted by googlefudge
This is a totally different topic, so if you really want to discuss it I suggest
creating a new thread otherwise this threads going to be unintelligible.

But if [and we should and probably will] we get everyone in the world up to
the basic minimum access to healthcare and education then the birth rate
will fall to about replacement levels.

An ...[text shortened]... whole other topic, and I would like to stay at least vaguely on the one
topic in this thread.

I know this is going completely off-topic from this thread (none of us were talking about GM! ) but I agree with you here and would say that GM in the future will be highly beneficial to humanity not just because of nitrogen fixations but for many things in many different ways.

Originally posted by humy
I know this is going completely off-topic from this thread (none of us were talking about GM! ) but I agree with you here and would say that GM in the future will be highly beneficial to humanity not just because of nitrogen fixations but for many things in many different ways.

So, staying on-topic.... Are you going to answer my epicly long clarifying post?