Nowadays, teams of engineers typically take five to ten years to develop a new space system, spending tens to thousands of millions of dollars along the way. These engineering delays and costs make progress painfully slow. In coming years, though, computer-aided design systems will evolve toward automated engineering systems. As they do, engineering delays and costs will shrink and then plummet; computer-controlled manufacturing systems will drop overall costs still further. A day will come when automated design and manufacturing will have made space systems development more than tenfold faster and cheaper. Our progress in space will soar.

Since nanotechnology lends itself to making small things, consider the smallest person-carrying spacecraft: the spacesuit. Forced to use weak, heavy, passive materials, engineers now make bulky, clumsy spacesuits. A look at an advanced spacesuit will illustrate some of the capabilities of nanotechnology.