Authors: Al Globus1, Charles Bauschlicher2, Jie Han1, Richard
Jaffe2, Creon Levit2, Deepak Srivastava1 1. MRJ Technology
Solutions, Inc. at NASA Ames Research Center 2. NASA Ames
Research Center Unfortunately, methods to realize diamonoid
nanotechnology are at best highly speculative. Recent
computational efforts at NASA Ames Research Center [Globus 96]
and computation and experiment elsewhere suggest that a
nanotechnology based on machine phase functionalized fullerenes
may be synthetically relatively accessible and possess great
potential for aerospace applications. This nanotechnology might
use carbon nanotubes and related components as the building
blocks of molecular machines. Carbon nanotubes [Iijima 91] are
rolled up sheets of hexagonal graphite that form single or
multi-walled tubes. Typically, these tubes have caps with six
pentagons each that add curvature to form closed molecules.
Machine phase materials are (often hypothetical) materials
consisting entirely or in large part of microscopic machines