Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   powersoffour (powersoffour@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 19-Oct-2024 23:48:24 JST powersoffour

   in reply to

   • Charlie Stross
   • Jamie McCarthy
   • Deb Chachra

   @cstross @jamiemccarthy @debcha Related to this, I really enjoyed Anathem by Neal Stephenson ... but the food-related reveal never hit quite right for me. It seemed a bit too pat and also gotcha. But maybe that was the point? The idea of minor differences in food at a subatomic scale is neat but I'm not sure it 100% holds up under scrutiny, if the rest of the ways they interact with the world are largely unchanged.

   • Embed this notice
     Jamie McCarthy (jamiemccarthy@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 19-Oct-2024 23:48:25 JST Jamie McCarthy

     in reply to

     • Charlie Stross
     • Deb Chachra

     @cstross @debcha Was it Niven’s Known Space series that called manufactured food CHON, after the four elements used to make it?

   • Embed this notice
     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Saturday, 19-Oct-2024 23:48:25 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • Jamie McCarthy
     • Deb Chachra

     @jamiemccarthy @debcha That was a trope among Analog-SF writers in the 60s and early 70s, I think? Anyway, it's bullshit. While CHON are the commonest elements in stuff we eat, we need traces of a bunch more stuff—phosphorus, sulfur, selenium, iron, and so on—often bonded in unusual polycyclic aromatic organic molecules. "Food" isn't a single thing.

   • Embed this notice
     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Saturday, 19-Oct-2024 23:48:26 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • Deb Chachra

     @debcha

     Years and years ago on my blog I asked, "what's the smallest number of species you'd need to run a closed-cycle life support system on a generation ship/space colony?"

     It was trick question.

     Sure enough, within a few comments the first Space Cadet popped up to say "all you need is blue-green algae! And soy. (Maybe farm tilapia, too.)"

     They didn't like it when I asked about robustness, micronutrient recycling, and the trivial human need for variety in diet to stave off boredom …

   • Embed this notice
     Deb Chachra (debcha@saturation.social)'s status on Saturday, 19-Oct-2024 23:48:27 JST Deb Chachra

     in reply to

     • Charlie Stross

     @cstross I think that our engagement with materiality, embodiment, and infrastructure is so deep and so tacit that all three are easily taken for granted, especially by people whose survival needs are entirely and reliably met. Which is a good thing, to be fair! But ‘let’s ship 3D printers to Mars!’ is directly analogous to a little kid thinking that food comes from the supermarket.

   • Embed this notice
     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Saturday, 19-Oct-2024 23:48:28 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • Deb Chachra

     @debcha We seem to go through this phase with any new manufacturing technique when people seem to think it's a universal answer to *every* manufacturing problem, not just another tool with specific use cases. (And I fear a bad case of "let's ship 3D printers to Mars, that's all the colonists could possibly need" exists among the space cadets.)

   • Embed this notice
     Deb Chachra (debcha@saturation.social)'s status on Saturday, 19-Oct-2024 23:48:29 JST Deb Chachra

     in reply to

     • Charlie Stross

     @cstross So, I think you touched on this in your responses, but bumping: the central tenet of materials science is that the structure, properties, and process of materials are inextricably linked. You can 3D-print a steel katana to submicron precision, but without the forging process and its effects on the atomic level, it won’t *behave* like a katana. The same is true for the flimsiest of plastic shopping bags, with extrusion and alignment of polymer molecules.

   • Embed this notice
     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Saturday, 19-Oct-2024 23:48:30 JST Charlie Stross

     Mad speculative hypothesis: 3D printing technology can't be considered mature until it is possible to print, in situ, a fully fuelled fission reactor (complete with shielding, heat exchangers, turbines, etc) that—when you fill it with a moderator working fluid—starts to work as soon as you install the neutron initiator source.

     (Stop and think about the individual challenges FOR 3D PRINTING we need to overcome before actually doing this. It's a thought experiment, not a challenge.)