[gurps] Re: Volume of nano-feedstock?

[Ben Finney]

"Onno Meyer" <Onno.Meyer at gmx.de> writes:

> I'm looking at a nanofactory starship (guess why ...) and I can't
> find stats for the volume of nanofeed. The old UTT and the new UT
> both give costs per pound, but not volumes ...

That's because (by my reading of Ultra-Tech pp. 91–93) the
nanofactories transform the feedstock by mass, not by volume. They
consume elements in the same proportions of those elements as they
comprise the finished item.

Clearly the mass:volume of elements will vary depending on what those
elements are, which in turn depends on whatever it is you're asking
the nanofactory to produce.

There's no simple mass:volume ratio that will be true across different
items, because different items require different elements in the
feedstock in different proportions. Figure the mass of the finished
item, and you figure the mass of the feedstock. Figure the mass of one
item, figure its volume, and then you know the mass:volume of the
feedstock required *for identical copies of that one item*.

-- 
 \            “If you continue running Windows, your system may become |
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_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney