Winner of space 3D printing competition selectedhttps://3dprintingindustry.com/news/winner-space-3d-printing-competition-selected-98236/
Quote from: Prober on 11/10/2016 01:49 pmWinner of space 3D printing competition selectedhttps://3dprintingindustry.com/news/winner-space-3d-printing-competition-selected-98236/Those space tongs look good. Is the STL file for it publicly available?
That gold one really got me thinking... what if you weren't printing using particle beams to evaporate / modify compounds, but literally doing (n, X), (p, X) or other nuclear reactions with particle beams? I mean, that's grossly impractical for large scales, but since they're making things on the order of nanometers there... It'd mean the ability - if you had an abundant particle source - to do nanoengineering without having to have all of the compounds needed available locally, just a single block of a single substance which is then altered by reactions with the beam. You could control what reactions occur by controlling what particles and energies you use (simple neutron capture, multiple capture, neutron multiplication, spallation, etc), and thus produce a range of compounds with different properties in a target - conductors, insulators, gases, liquids, etc. You'd also have (some) control over depth of where the beam modifies. You'd also have the ability to create a variety of radioactive isotopes in the structure, and thus nanoscale RTGs, self-ionization for nanoscale structures that can be moved around by electric or magnetic fields, etc.The printing would be messy (you never have complete control over what reactions will occur or very narrowly constrained depths), but I see no reason why it couldn't be done (on very small scales). Probably not reasonable for most applications, but the concept occurred to me when I read that.