Afterhearing the news that NASA had “ email ” a wrench up to an cosmonaut on the ISS through its 3D printing machine , there was one word that keep come up : Replicator . So , do we last have a working replicator on our hand ?
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-just-emailed-a-wrench-into-space-1673194211
“ Oh my god , you realise what this means ? The ISS has a goddamned replicator … ” , wrotethekeith82 . And several other commenters agree ( “ Replicator : a socket pull . And a cupful of Earl Grey afternoon tea . ” – MacShea ) , and not without reasonableness . After all , just like the replicator , it ’s a machine capable of building a quest object on site , almost immediately .
So is the 3D blank printing machine a replicator ? Well , not quite . For one thing , instead of a stored formal , this one was acquire by a team of engineers working on the flat coat on request and then emailed up to Wilmore . Even more importantly , unlike science fiction replicators , where target are produced seemingly on demand and whole , this 3D printed interpretation come out as a 20 - piece forum kit , that Astronaut Barry Wilmore then snapped together into a work socket wrench .
But , while this may not be our replicator , what we do have is something almost as interesting — perhaps even more so .
One of the questions that ’s been raise about a theoretic replicator is whether , and to what degree , customization would be both hardheaded and potential . surely , there would be some level of hack that could and would take place . But just as likely is that objects ordered through some kind of replicator would become more and more standardized . Not unlike ordering a Big Mac at a MacDonald ’s window , the objective produced through a replicator could very likely be very , very standardised to one another .
With 3D printing machine , however , the power to grow infinitely customizable kits — capable of being adapt , swop out , and continually altered — is already bake into the technology . It ’s for sure no replicator . But a future where we have to build and always correct our own technology , instead of having it meet us fully formed just might be the future I ’d prefer to hold out in .
3D printingStar Trek
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