On the eve of the Sixties' space race, it was Richard Feynman's firm belief that science had far too long ignored the vast possibilities of exploring inner, as opposed to outer, space.

Feynman, the late Nobel-winning physicist at the California Institute of Technology, beheld a world of promise lying in front of the very nose of science. His lament: Few were thinking small enough to see it.

Feynman spoke passionately of uncharted, microscopic and submicroscopic worlds offering limitless opportunities for technological advancement in computing, materials research, manufacturing, energy production and even medicine.

His words were uncanny on a number of counts. First, there's a fleshed-out, multi-dimensional scope of investigation into tiny things today that embraces everything Feynman dreamed of, and then some; and second, the field is so new that practitioners in industry and academe look at the calendar and wonder just where we'd be had we not waited so gosh darn long to get started.

Nanotechnology—the name for the applied side of nanoscience—will be the lead horse pulling a parade of research in dozens of fields throughout the new century, a growing team of cheerleaders say. In his state of the union message last January, President Bill Clinton trotted out a proposal for a National Nanotechnology Initiative, a plan that calls for a whopping 84 percent increase in federal support for nano-research. Such a boost would mean nearly half a billion dollars going toward advancing U.S. nanoscience in 2001.

A popular misconception about nanotechno-logy is that it's primarily aimed at building ever-smaller, yet ever more clever computers. Truth is that the field sweeps well beyond the manic battle to build better, faster rockets to cyberspace. By focussing ultra-strong microscopes on problems in industry, health and national security, scientists and engineers are turning out working machines with moving parts hundreds of times smaller than the width of a human hair. Such "nanoma-chines" and their spin-off technologies will some day be the pile drivers in the construction of such exotica as:

• a variety of products built from the bottom up—an atom or molecule at a time—thus insuring flawless manufacture and supreme accuracy and utility;
• nanocomputers, small enough to circulate freely in the bloodstream and monitor one's health and even seek and destroy blood clots, cancer cells and other pathogens;
• ultra-sensitive, ultra-small sensors and other electrical components for thousands of uses in industry, particularly in communications, medicine, agriculture, aerospace engineering and the military.
• a new class of drugs exquisitely designed to destroy diseases and even repair mangled genes;
• manufacturing materials 10 times stronger than steel and a 50th the weight;
• energy storage devices that will make today's best batteries look dead by comparison; and
• the first real intelligent machines, capable of virtual thought, if not reason.

Or so the hype goes. Down-to-earth industry analysts are predicting that the market won't see much Nasdaq-thumping impact from nanotechnology for at least two, perhaps three decades, and many of the more exotic applications may come decades after that, if ever.

But the idea of being able to stack atoms and molecules wherever one (and decidedly not nature) wants is simply too appealing to fret over timetables, funding and inevitable fumbles, say nanoscientists. For some, the dramatic success in shrinking the size of computers provides all the optimism they need.

That's not hard to figure. If the current rate of shrinkage in computers continues, the world could see its first molecular-scale computer by 2010, only half a century after Feynman's now-famous call to think small. – F.S.