>>>If you want nanites to build your house,...
>... If anything, I would expect a NT-built
>structure to be more efficient and, hence, less massive.
Nor does the concept of nanotech equivalents of bricks, 2x4's, etc show up. If you build your house out of a solution containing limited assembers and pre-fabricated strength members, cpu's, information and power conduits, etc, you're NOT assembling it atom by atom....Drexler makes similar arguments in his second "popular" book about nanotech: you don't, after all, make bricks by gluing grains of sand together......
>OTOH, if the individual atoms are going to be plucked from a matrix and
>then stuck onto another one, waste heat will probably be generated in both
>processes.
I agree here: which goes back to my previous argument: how many of us build houses today of rocks and trees ? We don't: we use bricks and pre-cut wood......
Keith
[The possible alternative would be a nanotech system that used materials
from the site; a fiberglass-filled composite could be made by rearranging
atoms in sand and dirt. You'd have the same choice you always did:
Fast or cheap?
--JoSH]