"Knowledge is power" states Dr. Meyya Meyyappan, Director of the Ames' Center for Nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is the new thing a few large-scale companies like NASA are looking at. This technology is one of the things for which the scale of availability isn't in months or years: it's in decades. For those who are not aware of it, the exact definition of nanotechnology is "the creation of materials, devices, and systems through the manipulation of individual atoms and molecules."

It costs NASA $10,000 per pound to send something in orbit, which becomes $100,000 per pound to Mars. Carbon nanotubes, so they're called, are stronger than steel, lighter than aluminium, more conductive than copper and make good semiconductors. Even though they have a complicated structure, which is exactly why it will take NASA and others decades as opposed to years to make it available, they're still being used in cosmetics, car doors, tyres and chemical products. Host Larry Magid talks to Dr. Meyya Meyyappan about this whole 'Nanotechnology business': the past, the future, the current and what NASA and others are doing.

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Dr. Meyya Meyyappan is the Director and Senior Scientist at Ames’ Center for Nanotechnology in Moffett Field, CA. At NASA, his team is presently researching and developing carbon nanotubes. Dr. Meyyappan is the IEEE Distinguished Lecturer on Nanotechnology. For his work and leadership, Dr. Meyyappan has been awarded NASA's Outstanding Leadership Medal and the Arthur Flemming Award by the Arthur Flemming Foundation and George Washington University.

Resources:

• Center for Nanotechnology Homepage & Gallery
• Wikipedia entry: nanotechnology
• Dr. Meyyappan's Inside Interview at NASA.

This program is from the Larry's World series.

For Team ITC:

• Description editor: Sid Yadav
• Post-production audio engineer: Paul Figgiani