Nanotech: 2B-Not2B

[Patron Zero]

I would like to open the subject of the inclusion-exclusion of nano technology in Traveller as to my knowing there has not been an 'approved'-canon material covering the subject.

My two cents on the issue reserves the application on nanotech to medical or engineering applications, both having set limitations for obvious game balance and adherence to recognized tech levels.

Simply said, nanites (or nanobots) are powerful tools for both the physician or the engineer that in reasonably 'controlled' circumstances would enhance the abilities of either professional.

Trauma packs that would include medically programmed nanobots could provide immediate aid before the patient might safely reach a triage facility or other care is available.

Engineers would appreciate the 'point of view' inspection nanos might offer when such are physically traveling a vessel's 'neural' network detecting damage or wear. Having said eyes to assist in accessing damage in an emergency could be as much a life or death circumstance as the above example.

The obvious potential for abuse aside, I vote for nanotech to be as much a part of the tools found on a starship as vac suits and self-sealing stem bolts.

Thoughts, opinions or referral to materials appreciated !

 

[Easterner9504]

Nanites

I use them in IMTU usually in innocuous things like clothing as described in GURPS Ultra-tech.

Since nanites have been discussed a few decades I can't imagine them not being available. However a strong abuse of them could have led to backlash banning ala A.I. & Psi. As usual I'd expect Soli's being most interested in them as would advanced bio-tech.

 

[Icosahedron]

IMTU, I keep nanotech firmly in the background. It exists, it might even be common, but only in the form of finished products. It is perhaps used to make skin-tight vacc suits, anagathics, drive components, battledress, grav modules, etc.

But...

The actual nanites that create the stuff will never fall into the hands of a roving Free Trader crew. For one thing, they are guarded like bioweapons as highly-prized corporate secrets, and for another, most of them need huge billion-credit industrial complexes to create them and control them. Outside of the factory they are either nothing more than inert powder, or are slaved to the single task that makes their finished product work.

There are no tank-eater clouds IMTU, you can't 'reverse the polarity' of someone's anagathics, and you can't reprogram their vacc suit to crush them.

Nanotech just doesn't work that way. :smirk:

 

[Ran]

Nanotechnology exists.
But not in the free roaming sense gray goo sense. On high tech worlds you might find them in factories anchored to some piece of machinery or sealed off in a containment room assisting in the yield of precision alloys and such. The machinery is hardly "nano" despite works on a nano scale.

 

[mike wightman]

Biotech an nanotech are very similar - molecular sized "machines" that manufacture something.

I think GT had it right where it says that nanotech exists in nealy all of the TL9+ manufacturing processes.

Bio/nano tech can certainly be used to also explain how the various drugs in Traveller work too.

The idea of a self-replicating grey goo is no different really than a bio-engineered virus, bacteria or fungi designed to digest the enemy.

 

[Easterner9504]

Goo

But a killer goo would freak Vilani stick in the muds. View as another Terran death plague.

BANNED ON VLAND!!!

Even Trek which was pretty open on science banned eugenics. You do recall the Eugenics War 10 years ago?

 

[kafka47]

If you understand nanotech as micro machining tools then nanotech is even canon in Traveller. It is just that nanotech does not work as it is written about in today's science fiction it is rather an Engineer's best friend save, the magic nanotech for the Ancients. But, practical application of chemistry to engineering problems in Traveller - yeah, I will buy that is within the realms of the OTU. Societies petrified of nanotech just like robots are in parts of the Rim could put a damper on things.

The secret with nanotech is not to take it too far. Ask why the players believe a nanotech solution is necessary and if they can explain the science and not the just the application of it...then I for one as a Ref. would allow it. But, if they start spewing techno gobbly-goop then I would veto it.

 

[Hemdian]

I would like to open the subject of the inclusion-exclusion of nano technology in Traveller as to my knowing there has not been an 'approved'-canon material covering the subject.

It depends on what you mean by nanotechnology.

Simple nanotech, such as nano-particles, exist today. (My laptop came with nano-particles of silver on the keyboard as an anti-bacterial coating.) And no doubt there will be more and more complex nano-structured chemicals with a variety of new properties.

It’s also true that we can built nano-sized devices in the lab. And, again, I have no doubt that practical applications of this will emerge.

But the classic SF nano-tech has swarms of nano-sized robots, acting individually yet in concert. IMTU this turns out to be unfeasible at TL15 and below. One of those nascent technologies that fails to deliver. It’s the whole C&C of the thing that is, to my mind, the great stumbling block. (Though I reserve the ‘right’ to introduce it IMTU at a much higher TL.)

(Actually, I’m sure I saw somewhere that “grey goo” was a TL twentysomething? Most of my stuff is in storage so it's hard to check.)