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Question on Cornucopia Machines...

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Sun, 2010-07-25 21:58

Duke Rollo Duke Rollo's picture

Question on Cornucopia Machines...

Question about cornucopia machines. About how long do they take to assemble something? Is this detailed in the book somewhere? No. I am not looking for exact figures. Yes. I can come up with an idea on my own of how long things take to fabricate. However, I am looking for what the designers intended (and for the input from fellow players). If there is a population of biomorphs trapped in a ship or habitat with a single cornucopia machine, how long does it take to make a new one? Sure, cornucopia machines can make more of themselves, but what happens if that process takes say... two weeks. What would people do for food and water? What if the machine is supplying the oxygen? In terms of the three types of economies, how much of an ordeal is it for a cornucopia machine to make a cornucopia machine? Is it easy enough that nearly everyone can have one? Is it like the Transmetropolitan comic where everyone has one in their home? (outside the Jovian areas of course). Just trying to wrap my head around it.

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-Duke Rollo

Sun, 2010-07-25 22:24

Decivre

Re: Question on Cornucopia Machines...

Duke Rollo wrote:
Question about cornucopia machines. About how long do they take to assemble something? Is this detailed in the book somewhere? No. I am not looking for exact figures. Yes. I can come up with an idea on my own of how long things take to fabricate. However, I am looking for what the designers intended (and for the input from fellow players). If there is a population of biomorphs trapped in a ship or habitat with a single cornucopia machine, how long does it take to make a new one? Sure, cornucopia machines can make more of themselves, but what happens if that process takes say... two weeks. What would people do for food and water? What if the machine is supplying the oxygen? In terms of the three types of economies, how much of an ordeal is it for a cornucopia machine to make a cornucopia machine? Is it easy enough that nearly everyone can have one? Is it like the Transmetropolitan comic where everyone has one in their home? (outside the Jovian areas of course). Just trying to wrap my head around it.

In the book, they mention that objects will take varying times based on complexity. They also mentioned that if you want a hard number, they recommend simply assuming approximately 1 hour per cost category (trivial items take an hour, expensive items take five; page 285 in the core book). As for commonality, cornucopia machines are generally only common in anarchist habs and other locations that rely on a reputation economy. In old or transitional economies, cornucopia machines are heavily restricted or even banned, to prevent people from potentially destroying the economy by flooding it with cheaply-produced goods.

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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Mon, 2010-07-26 07:21

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Question on Cornucopia Machines...

Duke Rollo wrote:
About how long do they take to assemble something?

The "classic" sketch for a nanoassembler in Drexler's Nanosystems produces objects around one kilogram in mass and around 20 cm in about an hour. His "brick assembler" was estimated to be able to build structures of its own size and complexity in less than a day. The Phoenix nanofactory would have a tabletop nanofactory measuring 1 meter x 1 meter x 0.5 meters, weighing 10 kg or less (without coolant) that could produce 4 kg of diamondoid (a ~10 cm cube) in 3 hours, and could require as little as twelve hours to produce a duplicate nanofactory.See also the table of replication times for biological and technological systems. (generally, the book Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines by Freitas and Merkle is *crammed* with ideas, references and facts useful for Eclipse Phase. ) I would expect more complex objects being slower to manufacture because simple objects do not require the same high precision and are largely made up of volumes of the same structure. The above designs are largely trying to be general, while a cornucopia machine will be most efficient for the stuff most people print. It might store pre-printed subcomponents in internal containers, just assembling them into the right structure and adding the joins and extra details needed.

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Mon, 2010-07-26 16:41

mds

Re: Question on Cornucopia Machines...

Duke Rollo wrote:
What if the machine is supplying the oxygen?

It could be that you're just referring to creating O[sub]2[/sub] from CO[sub]2[/sub], but I've seen alchemical cornucopia machines referenced in this forum in the past, so it's worth mentioning again for a hypothetical reader's edification: The cornucopia machines in Eclipse Phase available to PC-level intellects can't transmute elements. A cornucopia machine can only rearrange existing atoms to construct new molecules, but can't turn, say, 8 N[sub]2[/sub] molecules into 7 O[sub]2[/sub] molecules. The nanofab you found that the TITANs made? Yeah, it might be able to transmute elements, but you probably won't appreciate this extra efficiency as it floods the hab with custom-designed exurgent infective agents. A standard cornucopia machine can, however, turn a mass of CO[sub]2[/sub] into a cloud of [sub]2[/sub], plus some carbon it can use in building things. In fact, I suspect that carbon scrubbing for raw materials would be a common task for cornucopia machines, and would be handled by specialized filters, rather than as a normal 'construction' function.

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[img]http://alfedenzia.com/eprep/?r=2[/img]

Mon, 2010-07-26 17:14

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Question on Cornucopia Machines...

Also, you can use the CM to build a regenerative scrubber device. It would absorb CO2, remove the carbon (requiring some power to do so) and release the O2. Presumably the carbon pellets can be fed to the CM.

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Mon, 2010-07-26 17:35

Decivre

Re: Question on Cornucopia Machines...

Arenamontanus wrote:
Also, you can use the CM to build a regenerative scrubber device. It would absorb CO2, remove the carbon (requiring some power to do so) and release the O2. Presumably the carbon pellets can be fed to the CM.

As an alternative the carbon pellets, along with water, air and a feedstock of minerals, can be used to produce food.

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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Mon, 2010-07-26 17:48

CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture

Re: Question on Cornucopia Machines...

Congratulations, we made a Maker!

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Mon, 2010-07-26 19:03

Decivre

Re: Question on Cornucopia Machines...

CodeBreaker wrote:
Congratulations, we made a Maker!

When you think about it, a maker is just a cornucopia machine specializing in food. In fact, all nanofabricator variants are simply cornucopia machines limited in some way.

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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]