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Printing a printer

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Tue, 2014-11-25 13:53

fafromnice fafromnice's picture

Printing a printer

I presume that the cornucopia machine are unable to print other cornucopia machine for obvious reason (at least on non-anarchist habitat) but they probably have some other interesting capability you could "give" to players I'm thinking some thing like your muse announce to you that your weapon have a recall on the auto cartridge ejector, please dump it in the nearest cornucopia machine for an upgrade or something like that where is the limit ?

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What do you mean a butterfly cause this ? How a butterfly can cause an enviromental system overload on the other side of a 10 000 egos habitat ?

Tue, 2014-11-25 14:35

UnitOmega

Well, the problem with

Well, the problem with printing a printer is the volume limit. I think even if you produce in parts and assemble, you can't produce an exact copy of the CM from a CM, it'd have to be slightly smaller (depending of course, on how, exactly, a CM is structured). It's not quite a copy of a copy situation, but unless CMs are structurally designed to do so, you should still see a slight drop in size and efficiency. Which would facilitate some time fixing the blueprints each time. I'd also like to hope that even the anarchists are smart enough not to build a Von Neumann option as a "factory fresh" setting. Due to their specialization and size, you can probably build specialized Fabbers and Makers in a Desktop CM, and may be able to have a CM made in one of those industrial sized fabricators. Of course, this is all predicated on how the internal structure of a CM actually works. I'm not an expert in nanofabrication by any means, so it is entirely possible that CMs could be built to spit out exact to scale replicas of themselves which you then hand assemble, that just seems like asking for a lot of trouble.

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Tue, 2014-11-25 14:47

fafromnice fafromnice's picture

yes it is, That's why it a

yes it is, That's why it a fun question :P I like to think about a CM who is auto-upgrading themselves :D

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What do you mean a butterfly cause this ? How a butterfly can cause an enviromental system overload on the other side of a 10 000 egos habitat ?

Tue, 2014-11-25 15:09

Decimator

There's no reason to assume

There's no reason to assume that a CM's casing must be rigid.

Tue, 2014-11-25 17:17

Chernoborg Chernoborg's picture

Saw this the other day and

Saw this the other day and thought it was appropriate for some of the discussions I've seen here ..also I laughed :) https://twitter.com/siavash/status/453671822941114368?s=09

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Current Status: Highly Distracted building Gatecrashing systems in Universe Sandbox!

Tue, 2014-11-25 18:19

fafromnice fafromnice's picture

that was also on my facebook

that was also on my facebook feed today this spark the above question

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What do you mean a butterfly cause this ? How a butterfly can cause an enviromental system overload on the other side of a 10 000 egos habitat ?

Tue, 2014-11-25 18:52

Bursting Eagern... Bursting Eagerness Soul's picture

I would assume that there are

I would assume that there are many more software problems than physical ones with having a CM make another CM. After all, you could probably kitbash the basics of a shitty one with a disassembler nanoswarm, another swarm to put things together, and a whole lot of coding. The real problems with having a CM make anything are having the right blueprints and getting around the restraints that are in most nanofacs.

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In other words, firing off a laser with a sufficient TWR for the recoil to be noticeable would require a post-miracle-tech laser weighing less than a disposable plastic spoon and powerful enough to shoot down Death Stars? -- ShadowDragon8685

Tue, 2014-11-25 20:32

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

I always considered CPM's be

I always considered CPM's be either large building scale structures with a lot of internal volume or large amorphous pools of nanites

Wed, 2014-11-26 16:29

fafromnice fafromnice's picture

www.space.com/27861-3d

www.space.com/27861-3d-printer-space-station-first-part.html

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What do you mean a butterfly cause this ? How a butterfly can cause an enviromental system overload on the other side of a 10 000 egos habitat ?

Thu, 2014-11-27 09:30

#10

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

A universe entirely comprised of CMs...

I see no reason for CMs not to be able to reproduce a equally sized or larger version of themselves, though the creation of parts which must be externally assembled. There are, however, practical limitations. The first is, as has been mentioned, volume. The canon says that even the smallest CM is a half-meter cube, which can produce items as large as a bowl of cereal. So CMs are going to be significantly larger than the things they can create, and creating a new CM of the same size or larger is going to take ages. Secondly, materials. It's a fair guess that a CM requires some very rare materials, such as heavy metals or artificial elements. Getting the feedstock to actually make a fully functioning CM could be a real nightmare. Finally, power. Again, it's reasonable to assume that CMs are power-hungry machines, using extremely energy-intensive processes even in normal operation, let alone when reproducing. It'd be completely plausible that many habs simply don't have the energy surplus required to enable CM production.

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