20170403 Reference #1 Page lx
On this day in 1520, the Magellan Expedition has reached Puerto San Julian, and a mutiny has just occurred.
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31 March 1520: The fleet enters Puerto San Julian (in 49 degrees 30 minutes South), where it remains for five months, until 24 August. Here the encounters with the Patagonia giants and the mutiny take place (107-88)
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From the account of Antonio Pigafetta we have (on page 12) (Item [25])
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Leaving there, we finally reached forty-nine and on-half degrees toward the Antarctic Pole [107].77 We passed two months there without seeing any people [109].
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Mr. Pigafetta's account (apparently) does not include selected unpleasant events, which are recorded elsewhere.
From the summary on Page lx:
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1 April 1520: During the night between 1-2 April, Juan de Cartagena attempts to kill the master of the
San Antonio, Juan de Elorriaga, and putin chains Alvara de Mesquita. Gaspar de Quesada and Juan Sebastian del Cano take possession of the
Concepcion and Luis de Mendoza of the
Victoria. Magellan suppresses the mutiny. A court martial is held and forty men are found guilty and condemned to death, including Gaspar de Quesada.
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From the complement of crew of 239, as recorded 5 May 1519, Magellan was now down to under 200, if all the planned executions were carried out.
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Since the purpose of this thread is to consider alternative futures for humans expanding away from Earth, and since the technology of atom assemblers has been introduced previously as a logical and attractive way for a community away from Earth to maintain a high technology while at the same time distributing the means of production equitably across the population, I would like to focus today on the topic of fabrication of a complex object.
Somewhat arbitrarily, today's object is a gasoline powered weedeater.
http://www.searspartsdirect.com/model-n ... 3820.html8The link above shows a machine sold by Sears: Model #FL20C TYPE 2 WEEDEATER Line Trimmers/Weedwackers, Gas
The web site presentation includes diagrams of the power head and the drive shaft assemblies.
There are a significant number of separate parts. From the stand point of an economy based upon atom assemblers which operate at the rate of biological structures such as trees, the manufacture of such a machine might most reasonably be approached in emulation of the distributed manufacturing system that was used to create this machine in the late 20th century.
A project leader would accept a commission to supply one of these devices, and that person would collect all of the digital files needed to fabricate all the components.
The project leader would then solicit participants in the project, to make components. In order for the manufacture to complete in the optimum amount of time, the project leader would employ software to optimize the process to accomplish the task in the minimum amount of time. It seems likely that manufacture of the cylinder (Item #6) would consume the most time, so that prepare a Gantt Chart for the project, with the cylinder as the long leg. The remaining components would be collected into sets whose total length did not exceed the cylinder line. The objective of this phase would be to achieve a plan that employed the minimum number of atom assemblers. A complication is the size of the atom assemblers which a particular individual might own, because the size would determine the parts that could be allocated.
In the end, the project leader would have a set of specifications ready to contract out to participants who respond to the Request for Participation message.
I am going to make a guess that the cylinder would take a year to assemble, but the crankcase assembly (Item #12) would be a close second.
Thus, a customer for one of these machines would expect to wait a year, and I am guessing that payment would be expected to accumulate in an escrow account during the assembly process, since all of the participants will have given up earning opportunities to take on this commission. In other words, the buyer would be expected to pay for the machine time expended in manufacture of the machine, whether or not the process runs to completion. A secondary market for insurance can be expected to develop to cover potential losses that might occur.
In an economy such as this, the concept of "mass manufacture" might still exist, but a group that decides to invest in equipment to manufacture large numbers of items would (no doubt) think long and hard about the potential sales opportunity available to them.
*** As a follow up, a neighbor provided an old Ryobi 13 cc weedeater, model 700r. I am planning to disassemble it, with a view to expanding upon the discussion of the Sears weed eater, which was based upon the web site image.
(th)
May every member of The Knowledge forum grow financially, intellectually, socially and beyond.