But what everyone should keep in mind discussing 3-D printing “today” is that printing a bust of Napoleon (essentially a sculpture – a lump of plastic) is much different from fabricating a complete working microprocessor, which after all is only a part of a working machine. The new Intel “fabricator” is a baby step toward small automated “factories” that can make machines. 3-D printing will be important certainly … but “fabricating” (especially things like microelectronic parts, etc.) seems some ways into the future. A robot, for instance, can be a “fabricator” by picking up 3-D printed parts and putting them together … but printing chips or even electronic “tattoos” or circuits that do something is a bit different order of things at this point.

So you can know what I mean by this curse, it is my hope you will linger long enough to get to your imagined future and be able to spare some of your printed crappy processors to replace all your dead neural cells and finally realize computing doesn’t even need them anymore.

You just can’t simply order a processor when you’ve rendezvoused with a near Earth asteroid. When people start building starships out in deep space, they will need to print up everything that they need.

I think it was just last week here at this site that there was an article about Deep Space Industries having a micro-gravity printer.

If you can make the Raspberry Pi out in orbit, you can use a network of them to control the attitude jets that you’ll want to place about the axes of a carbonaceous asteroid that you need to join up with a nickel-iron asteroid.

You will also need small computers to control the automated plant that distills water from the carbonaceous asteroid and pipes it to the hydrolysis plant that turns water into oxygen and hydrogen for all of those little rocket nozzles.

The smaller asteroids have very irregular shapes and will require a lot of course corrections from all ends of their length and breadth. A network of small computers will be just the thing for that.

- It is.

- I also have not denied that.
- You said “now”.

It is unbelievable how the Texas Instruments is still selling those 1990ish looking, blackwhite screened TI83s for more than $100 each.

Now these Raspberry Pis cost so little it is ecstatic to hear about them.
For sure the price (for 3D printing) of similar computers will drop and everyone can print it at home.

No. But even if it were, it would be much cheaper to simply order one.