In the next 20 years, a new industry called nanotechnology will cause significant changes in our lives.
Nanotechnology involves creating very tiny machines or robots no larger than a few nanometers.
A nanometer is just a billionth of a meter. These nanomachines will be able to manipulate atoms and fabricate materials at the atomic level. Because they can self-replicate, these tiny machines will make production of almost any product very cheap. One of the products of nanotechnology might be nanomachines that can be released to repair materials by sucking in surrounding molecules to repair a crack. If a crack formed in a spacecraft's composite shell, nanorobots could be released to gather molecules around the spacecraft to repair the crack.