I bet the fabricators could do food. They would still need raw or partially processed foods to supply them though. Remember on the Yamaro they picked from a menu and the food appeared hot and ready. I bet they could at least make something like MREs. Does anyone know just how automated they are? I know the jump emitters still required assembly after production. I'm thinking they're are a cross between a CNC machine and a 3d printer. Makes all the pieces but you still have to bolt it together. But your right about the a golden age after the war. The earth or Tanna could use these to arm the whole Jung empire or atleast supply new resistance cells. This could alleviate a lot of pressure off earth if the Jung are fighting resistance all over, they might glass the first few but they can't kill them all. They still need a work force, and the Jung home world is too far.
If the fabricators are like 3D printers, you can make food with them, but the question is why would you want to? You would have to have the food in a paste form already. Just bottle that up, and you already have an MRE. May not be elegant, but it is food. Better off using the fabricators to build the parts for a factory to make food, than to use them for making food, to be offloaded to factories to be cooked, packaged, boxed, and shipped out.
If the fabricators are like 3D printers, you can make food with them, but the question is why would you want to? You would have to have the food in a paste form already. Just bottle that up, and you already have an MRE. May not be elegant, but it is food. Better off using the fabricators to build the parts for a factory to make food, than to use them for making food, to be offloaded to factories to be cooked, packaged, boxed, and shipped out.
Almost every SF book with food replicators and the like, the results, while edible, taste bad. Also, it may be cheaper to just carry food.
Think of fabricators as really advanced 3D printers. They make parts. They have multiple heads, and can make complex parts utilizing many different materials. They can even combine materials to make other materials. However, they cannot rearrange atoms and such to make whatever they want out of inert mass. If you want iron, you have to feed it iron. If you want plastic you have to feed it plastic, and so on.
The parts that the fabricators make, although sometimes quite complex (think a complex circuit board.) still have to be assembled by either a worker or another assembly machine. (In most cases so far, think worker.) For example, the emitters, which are about the size of a large refrigerator, were all hand assembled using internal parts and external housings that had been created using both the large (for the housings and some internal frameworks) and small (internal parts) fabricators.
On the Aurora, if you want a burger, someone is going to have to cook it up.
As for the food service system on the Yamaro, that was simply a dispensing system. The foods were already precooked and in some cases frozen. A robotic system would simply select the proper elements, heat and assemble for serving. For example, you want Chicken Kiev with broccoli and mashed potatoes? Push the button and the machine will pull all three elements, heat them for service, then place them on the plate and move the plate to the service tray. Hell, we could make that using today's technology.
Why not create a Robbie.
Remember the classic film "Forbidden Planet".
".....simple alcohol and fusel oils. Would 60 gallons be sufficient?"
Here is a great video of what using a 3D printer to build something is like. Its only a large lego toy, but it should help you visualize how a fabricator might work.
To be honest the only revolutionary thing about '3D printers' is the underlying concept of additive manufacturing, other than that they are mostly toys geared toward consumer use (which looks like the old toy machines in the Malls, where you tried to fish something for your date) while the industry has been using far far more complexefficient machines.
GE, Ford, and General Motors are using 3D printers to make parts for prototypes, or entire prototypes. Ford has even been doing using 3D printers since the 1980's to build stuff. It is much faster to design and print off a prototype, than it is to make one time use molds to get the same thing done. It is just that recently the 3D printers have got to the point that we can miniaturize them for home use, and they are affordable enough that some people will buy them. Before long, we will probably start to see parts being made on order, instead of having the parts in stock, for pieces that rarely need replacing. Never having to wait for a backordered part to become available would be awesome.
"It is just that recently the 3D printers have got to the point that we can miniaturize them for home use, and they are affordable enough that some people will buy them." - which is pretty much when the term 3D printers was coined 🙂 Previously it was just another manufacturing technique that combined advances in materials science and engineering.
"Before long, we will probably start to see parts being made on order, instead of having the parts in stock, for pieces that rarely need replacing. Never having to wait for a backordered part to become available would be awesome" - I imagine it will have the same effect on the manufacturingretail sectors as mechanization had on agriculture at the time. Also its likely that piracy wont be limited to digital medium anymore i.e. pirates who don't want to pay, wait for price drop or insert whatever excuse, will need a little leak (or counterfeit design) and they'll be able to create that new piece of hardware (or designer cloth etc) at home almost for free..
Ehhhh, an we thought printer ink was expensive. 😛
@mordin:
3D pirates would definitely be an issue. Most of the stuff that can be 3D printed today wouldn't be very hard to reverse engineer a print* (obtained legally or otherwise), thus leading to "counterfeit" designs that would be rather similar if not identical depending on the amount of effort put into reverse-engineering.
For example, I'm fairly sure my old mechanical drafting kit contains everything what would be needed to do a decent job reverse engineering the 3D Darth Vader in the video above and everything in it could probably be obtained today for under $100.
*By print, I mean the actual 3D printed object
You can use an Xbox's Kinect to scan objects into a computer, then do some minor changes to correct the flaws, and print it off currently. When 3D printing becomes a major business, it isn't going to be the 3D models that are the money makers, since those can be copied. It will be access to high res printers and custom materials that will be needed to make high quality objects that make the money. And when high res printers and all of the materials needed to make whatever, are available to everyone, it will switch to subscription based access to the designs, and the materials that make the money. Pay 30$ a month and get access to all of the original, high quality 3D print diagrams.
Look at the music industry, even though songs are digital and can be stolen, resold as fakes, or just shared to everyone, the music business is still making money because people want the real merchandise.
In the end though, everyone won't have a 3D printer, but I wouldn't be surprised if places like Wal-Mart had one, and you just looked through a catalog of toys you want and the print of the ones that while you wait.
Before long, we will probably start to see parts being made on order, instead of having the parts in stock, for pieces that rarely need replacing.
Parts to order? Jay Leno already does that. For some of those old vehicles he has, if you need a new part, the ONLY way to get it is dig out the drawings for it and make one from scratch. He loves 3D printers.
Have one in my fifth wheel, love it. Along with on demand water heaters both tranding in both marine and RV industry.
On a side note...
There was a short story sometime back about this scientist that created a fabricator. It had treads to move about and a claw to pickup raw materials and put them into its hopper.
One day he decided to try and see if he could make it smaller. He programmed the device to make itself at 1/10 its size.
It worked! So then he decided to see how small he could make it but when he programmed the unit, he left the count empty.
The fabricator made tiny fabricators (like nanites) but continued to make millions overnight.
The result was a plague of nanite fabricators that went on a spree to replicate - eating anything they could find for raw materials.. bridges, cars, planes, anything with metal.
Funny ending, eventually they started using low grade stuff as most of the better metals had been consumed. A rainstorm came and they rusted. lol
