🚀 go-pugleaf

[Although I do not share Mr. Dunphy's pessimism, I second his proposal
 empahtically... Before we can do this in more than a handwaving
 way, however, we need molecular simulation software.  Does anyone know of
 any usable PD codes, or is there any interest in a sci.nanotech-based
 collaboration to produce such a beast?
 --JoSH]

This is one of the big obstacles stated by the Foresight Institute (at least I 
think remember reading in one of their newsletters). The problem is that a 
molecular scale machine runs on the order of 5,000,000 atoms (is that the right
magnitude? I'm thinking about that arm in NanoSystems). Anyways, computers 
available to the general public simply aren't powerful enough for this amount
of computation, thus there is no software to use.

Alan

[I think you need a system that can operate at a higher level of abstraction
 than the ones that are used to do chemistry.  If we know that a diamondoid
 structure acts like an elastic solid with certain parameters, the system
 should treat it as such (for example). 
 --JoSH]