In my opinion a bioship ought to have it’s metabolism be overhauled to work on either a common or energy dense resource. Say, radiation, or, if you can pull it off, water. For a high energy source I recommend anti-mater or radioisotopes. This may seem like something odd for a bishop to eat but some fungi eat radiation, I think.
To me it seems completely opposite: if you need to make a rocket engine from metals anyway, why not also make the ship structure from metal, which is more durable (probably) per weight unit and doesn’t need constant energy to maintain.
Yes, but if it breaks you need to go and repair it yourself, instead with a biological structure you wouldn’t need to go and repair it, because it repairs itself.
Edit: I’m aware now
But you need to constantly feed the biological mass to keep it alive, and for it to repair itself, it needs also biological matter to consume. So in addition to feeding your astronauts you need to budget extra weight for food for the biological ship. I’m very much not convinced that a biological ship really has any other advantage than that you could save manpower that would go into constructing a ship out of metal.
My conclusion is still: this is basically an underwater civs discussion where no one wants to actually put in the work to make their cool feature an actually realistic design.
They could make it so that the bioship has a slow metabolism and they could feed the bioship a really high nutrient liquid wich would make the bioship require a little bit of this liquid in intervals of great times (Thing wich you cant do with a normal spaceship neither)
Again, in Stellaris is interesting thing, i want to tell about.
Regenerating sheathing.
It works by special bacterias, which have the product of vital activity, similar with sheathing. It is possible with xenobiology. Maybe.
Against bioships i can tell next things: it should be much more expensive, than it would need to usual spaceships. You should firstly do this creature (a lot of time of biologists’ work), grow it up (in special conditions, somebody should watch after them), after modernise them with specially projected parts, which needs a lot of time to.
And another thing: how will this creature survive and laser? Under explosions? Why do you want whole creature, if you need only his skin?
Anyway, much easier to take special bacterias. They can be frozen when they are not needed, it’s hard to kill them all, when for animal in space it is the easiest way to kill whole command.
New argument: animal has only one outer cover, when for spaceships needed minimum 2. And even if animal has 2 or more outer covers, they are mutually depended. For spaceships it is Unacceptable.
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Here’s an idea: make a normal metal ship that regenerates just like a living thing. It may be expensive but a ship could be made to have redundant parts that the ship could make itself. If a bishop could be taken down by shooting it’s heart this actually makes it harder to kill. This healing ship could have mining (and probably repair and agriculture) bots to gather materials to repair the ship. This ship could repair like a bioship without losing anything, including cost effectiveness. My dad’s favorite arguement against space wars is that no one would have the budget to make trillion dollar space ships just have them blown up. As long as no one actually obliterated the enemy’s ships this would be a manageable cost to defend your territory. My other arguments against this cost argument is the idea of a K2 civilization, and the fact of the United States. The States have a truly insane military budget. Even with half of the USA’s percentile spending on the military a K2 civ has the budget for a space navy the size of the empire’s in Star Wars, just maybe without the hyperdrives. Sorry I got of topic, but the points are self repairing ships can exist without being biological, and that SFIA has videos on all of these topics please look up SFIA on YouTube Isaac is my muse. Anywho thanks for listening.
I think most designs of these ships account against most consceptualizations for how geoidal life came to be such as special cases of evolving on asteroids or being made through genetic engineering. Take for example the Banu Defender ship in star citizen. The ship design resembles that of a crab.
One might say on the alien world this vessel was developed on, it originated from a crab-like convergent life form that has been modified to fit the needs of a pilot for a more personally applicapable intelligence and ship regeneration. There is also the case that this life is an artificially synthesized life form entirely and is more like a machine, biological in the fact that it has the qualities of eating and processing and growing and replicating and regenerating itself. There is the chance this life form is outside the scope of geoidal life entirely and developed on far more alien conditions. To even begin to fathom what this life would look and behave like would require lots of work. Assuming this life develops on some small minor moon or asteroid which would be devoid of water or atmosphere is probably first assumption, but would set many requirements that may not even be possible to achieve. There are cases of microbes hitching rides with us to space and being the extremophiles that they are, able to survive the vacuum of no pressure at all, the cold, and the radiation. The question depends on whether such life can start on its own on an tiny empty celestial body stripped of an atmosphere, or maybe in the vacuum itself. How ever, it makes more sense for such life to evolve on an asteroid than in a vacuum simple because it is easier to sustain your mass in such a case as you could latch to the ground and move there. This excludes the vacuum life for the most part (at least in probabilities of which environment is more favoured for such a thing happening). Obtaining matter and energy would be a struggle since all there is on a small rock is… Well… Rock. No water to flow and dissolve ionic compounds, no air to respirate the way most geoidal lifeforms do. I was thinking perhaps of silicon based life in a situation like this, relying on diffusion and electron based aerobic respiration at first, and later evolving a more powered system. Such life may adapt to the conditions of machines here and converge with them (as crazy as that sounds). Perhaps they metamorphasize to construct biological fans that grow from a solid form, possibly kind of like keratin in our fingernails, and as the body grows these blades would detach. The ideas of such life including mine are all very hypothetical and speculative and probably on the very edge of what is actually possible. I personally think that if this type of life is possible at all, it would take the benefits and design of both biological forms and mechanical forms, starting from a more biological base, and motorized industrial integrations into the body as these creatures grow and evolve. Such life is more likely to evolve within patches of asteroid fields, and I am not sure if asteroids can appear in spots like gas clouds, but of any hope of these things being aerodynamic and possibly for them to even be able to exist, their homes might have to exist in one. Flying would be a strategy in this hypothetical world as it would enable you to search for important chemicals and other creatures on other asteroids. This life would also need to adapt to the changes in pressure as the gas cloud dissipates and moves along at different pressure and depth gradients I would imagine. This life would probably form some rotary components and may eat food far different than most earth life. Keep in mind this is a take with little knowledge on gas clouds and asteroids and what physics actually allows. The most probable case is this life is synthesized or is from contamination from other life forms accidentally sending life to space which would adapt to it. We must also keep open minded about the size and complexity such life would have to be, as a microbe would have a far better time existing in a vacuum than more complex forms. Then again, we can also say that for even an earthly environment.
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What about a photosynthetic bioship with a light-sail? This makes sense to me, as it already needs a lot of light to propel it, so there wouldn’t be a problem with energy, and the matter could be kept in the body with an airtight sheath, with it being constantly recycled over the journey
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Some problems, which were discussed before: how did they appear, where will they take H2O and CO2 for photosynthesis, how do they maneuver (and why do they need this?) how should they move? On asteroids not enough material to do alive creature. Ok, some prions, possibly, viruses can take enough material from it, but they will can’t appear, because on asteroids no any liquid water, which could help in creating lifeforms by movement of particles. In “dead” environment without any movement under radiation they will not appear.
How will they maneuver? If to explore the movement in space, you will understand, that the constant acceleration is harmful. It will can’t rebore to restart, they can’t learn all information we have. So they can’t plan their movement, it’s a big problem.
Space is vacuum. You will not take anything from environment. H2O and CO2 are not exceptions.
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These would have to be bioengineered, but once made, they could likely survive by endlessly recycling its waste with the energy it absorps through photosynthesis
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In sells are many different processes in cell, which need a lot of not only glucose. Different proteins, lipids, nucleotides, sugars.
If in future humans will can create the completely artificial cell, we can continue those dialogues about synthetic life.
And you will not have SO much water, oxygen and carbon dioxide for alive creature with giant (i suppose, minimum 2-9 km² they should be) “wings”. A lot of energy you move them - billions of ATP molecules, remember about the reaction control system (if i wrote right). Stabilization of so big creature will need a lot of air, which is so important, because for your normal cycle (which is impossible, because much part of glucose goes away for other processes in organism. I didn’t tell about details in biochemistry) needed 100+ % efficiency.
Simply think: cells will die under giant constant radiation. To create new cells you need more material. Biological reserves will end through couple of months with best luck. Flights to other planets need near to 100 days (Earth-Venus, if remember right. For others usually more).
Remember, you can’t simply create the infinity machine on biological processes. All of them are not perfect. Ok, couple can be perfect, but you will can’t use them…
The wings would not need to move, as they would be pushed with light from some external source. Furthermore, if a powerful laser is used with a more efficient sort of photosynthesis, then it doesn’t seem implausible that the cells in the ship could be upkept with just energy and recycled waste
I didn’t mean that the efficiency is inly about light. I mean that the process isn’t really good in all. Of course, thanks to it happend some important events, but with this it didn’t change for billions of years. Memorize. Glucose and oxygen - not the “key to success”. Why, do you think, something goes out from organism? Because organism can’t decompose them. Don’t think, that glycolysis and photosynthesis are alone biological processes in organism.
And wings will should move as sails of old ships. Or you will fly away from your system because you have a constant acceleration and soon or later simply or fire near to star or fly away. Second is more possible, but… Ok
For normal maneuvers in space you should change your position in space on three axes. Without this you will be killen.
Ok, next important - battles. You haven’t anything to lose - it’s in “infinity cycle of energy and material”. Ok, mechanisms. Hiw to protect? The biggest problem of star wars. Alone even smallest meteorite will send all ship and nearest ships to devil, because there are no any atmosphere, colossal speeds (even on our orbit 7-11 km per second. In the space near to Mercury near to 48 km per second). Yes, even now humans create “force fields”, but they are not perfect, again. How to protect giant square in space against small meteorites not preventing for doing maneuver and “infinity cycle”?
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You know what, let’s go back to basics. What do you need in a spaceship? I’m going to start a list, as I get some answers I’ll add and subtract as needed.
A ship must:
- To a relatively large degree, provide protection to essential operating equipment.
- This will, at minimum, protect delicate or sensitive systems from high energy emissions as well as the plentiful micrometeorite impacts, as well as hardening to necessary modules (propulsion, life support-if applicable-, power and C3)
- This may be done via absorbent materials, sheer mass, reduntency or active shielding.
- Minimize damage and losses of less essential equipment.
- At minimum, you want to ensure that at all times there is enough less essential materials and equipment to finish the operation said ship is undertaking (fuel, excess life support supplies, supplementary anything).
- This can involve (once again) redundancy of materials, some minor form of shielding, and self repair of said systems during operation.
- Withstand normal operation stresses with a enough ruggedness to avoid breakdown during normal operation.
- This covers standard maneuvers, accelerations and gravity profiles that the ship will undergo (so direct environmental effects and things you do as part of moving).
- Reinforcement of structural components, self repair of damaged sections, limitation of stress conditions (don’t cause twisting across a frame during acceleration) and redundancy are all options.
- Maximize the thrust to weight ratio (twr) given the time frame of the operation.
- Unless you can find a way to ignore the tyranny of the Rocket Equation, the less you have to burn mass the better.
- This can be done by extending the time frame of the operation, utilizing more efficient maneuvers and using higher twr engines.
So, how would three hypothetical systems (an all mechanical, a hybrid aka organically crewed and fully biological) compare.
- Fully mechanical:
- Except for maintenance access, essential systems may be compacted into smaller shielded areas (normally via mass, though this could be active). In addition, life support systems (besides power and maybe some self repair) may be completely ignored, further reducing the amount of volume that has to be protected. There should be some form of redundancy or heavy hardening, simply to ensure continued system operation in the face of high energy emissions in the face of limited self repair.
- Limited self repair means that redundancy and hardening is key here - the lack of excess life support and similar systems means that you can spend comparatively more mass on said redundancy.
- Unlike the squishy splatterable hybrid system, a purely mechanical system is more or less solid state when necessary, meaning that the acceleration may be greater without issue. With less volume dedicated to other things, it may be assigned reinforcement or completely ignored, further reducing the size and mass of the actual ship.
- With a large reduction is required components (life support and supplemental living resources i.e. beds) as well as the associated reduction in volume, ships may be built much smaller, with a greater volume protected per unit of shielding. This makes them highly efficient for their job.
- Hybrid System (I’m going to call it ant colony)
- Maintenance of all essential systems must be accessible by comparatively large mechanisms, control systems are also comparatively large, meaning that per unit/volume shielding is less effective while still required as said control systems are difficult to properly harden, necessitating said less efficient shielding. The required life support system is less problematic, as the most massive parts of said system may be used as shielding in and of themselves, reducing the mass (but still leading to greatly increased volume).
- Continuing the previous trend, comparatively more mass and volume must be assigned to supplementary life support, which may be used as possible, though far less efficient, shielding. This increased mass and volume means that more secondary propellant must be utilized.
- C3 and self repair systems are incredibly fragile, require massive curtailed maneuvering profiles without inertial dampening. Even accelerations at half a g in the wrong vector can heavily damage such mechanisms. Self repair, is, at least, a primary priority.
- Comparatively more massive ships reduce the twr of the propulsion (via an increase in weight). Increasing the operation time of the ship rapidly increases the needed life support mass and volume until a point where it eventually levels off, meaning that the ship efficiency is highly important in reducing time.
- Fully Biological
- All essential operating equipment may be assumed to be at least partially self repairing, reducing the need for volume dedicated to access. Instead, this may be assumed to be a section of life support that scales with the mass of other essential systems. Reinforcement and hardening is assumed to be done via production of biologically originated substrate and leaving a solid frame of some form. Power generation, on the other hand, is nominally relegated to less efficient systems due to it’s distributed nature (even if this makes it harder to completely shut down given proper compartmentalization) meaning a lower peak power generation but vastly increased base power requirements.
- Secondary life support is still important and comparatively more supplies must be available due to increased requirements per unit run time than either a fully mechanical or hybrid system. Loss of some of these resources is to be expected as self repair means the system is notoriously inefficient, however the life support system should be capable of partial (if not complete) replenishment of lost supplies given access to adequate raw materials and enough functional essential systems.
- While more fragile than a truly solid state system, a purely biologically derived system is still more resistant to environment damage via internalized self repair. Compacted systems means that acceleration is less of an issue, though once again reduced compared to a more solid state system. Low level redundancy is likely to be a common feature, though true redundancy is far less likely to occur.
- Twr dies here. Comparatively far more work must be used to create equivalently efficient or energetic systems, relegating most propulsion to less efficient and powerful hybrid systems. Given available external energy sources the ship may be considered capable of extending it’s operating time drastically, but lacking these options it has a short operation duration due to inefficient power generation.
So in the end, we end up with this:
- Solid state mechanical is, per volume and per mass more efficient since it allows the system to ignore the now unnecessary systems and achieve ship objectives within the given operation period, at the cost of once an essential system goes down the minimalist self repair options leaves it nonviable. It has access to a wide and effect variety of propulsion and power systems, only outpaced by those systems that require maintainence during operation. This is a comparatively tanky option, that relies on your ship not breaking in the first place, though this protection may be scaled far beyond the options available to the other paradigms.
- Hybrid systems have a wide variety of flaws, and are best viewed as two systems working in tandem: A solid state system that gives up on the lightness, compactness and damage mitigation of a standard solid state system and a comparatively inefficient repair system that requires a great deal of upkeep, as well as acting as primary C3 so it must be protected. While it has access to the power and propulsion systems of a true solid state, it also has access to systems that require maintenance in transit (which depending on the utility thereof may be worth the inclusion?). These are best used when you don’t have access to a better method - this is a generalist shipbuilding style that takes a few of the advantages of the other paradigms for the majority of the disadvantages.
- Biologically derived systems are designed around the concept of modularity and self repair; so long as there continues to be access to raw materials and the essential system maintain a critical level of functionality the system may operate more or less indefinitely. Minor damage is repaired continuously in situ, drastically extending operational times. This is needed, as the lack of access to highly effective solid state propulsion relegates said systems to long operation periods. The lack of highly effective power sources further compounds this. Thus, they are most effective when operating over long stretches of time unsupported in material and energy rich environs such as a solar system.
Here you go. Note, I’m using self repair for the biological, as the paradigm is the same whether we are talking about carbon or silicon derived life. The issue is the that you cannot treat each style the same - they are optimized for very different takes on functionality. Hybrid throws all your eggs in a single easy to break basket, with the understanding that this will take a lot of effort. Bioships are built around the concept of being self sustaining, only returning while needed. While solid state is unsurprisingly rigid and inflexible but very able to preform the specific role it was built for.
Next up (once I finish weeding out the logical inconsistencies) a very specific way of creating a naturally occurring bioship, and a reiteration that these will be vastly unlike the things you see on TV.
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Slight adjustment, just to make it a little more of a “bio”-ship.
All of the mechanical parts are grown by genetically engineered corals, and the hollow spaces are filled with a hyper durable filler material by genetically engineered archea and/or bacteriums. When an external force causes damage to one of these components a high strength biofilm seals of the area and coral embryos are brought out of suspended animation and flooded into the area. Local microbes use high strength acids and oxygen based toxins to remove damaged coral shells, which also fills the water with minerals. They then use synthetic hormones to mark where the corals should settle down, and once a coral spawns its children it is killed and its shell filled with a metamaterial of sorts.
These ships could even reproduce by “laying an egg.” These eggs would be full of nutrients and contain a superconducter loop for power. Microbes would exit the egg and form a biofilm around an carbon-asteroid or a metal rich comet in the inner system, using sunlight to melt the water in the comet/asteroid. The nutrients would be introduced into this mineral rich water, and synthetic algae or cyanobacteria would and oxygen and more nutrients, and the corals would begin to grow the ship. All the reqired microbes would be in the egg too, as well as frozen embryos for any other biological parts. After a while the superconducters loop would run out of power and be replaced with photozyme bacteria. The loop itself would be forged into an electromagnetic containment field generator by the microbes. The field generator In for a fusion reactor. In is doubtful that the comet/asteroid would be lacking in hydrogen, which will be used to fuel the reactor and drive. The finished still may be lacking in some resource or other, namely humans. In will use it’s fuel to acquire these.
Sorry for the lecture, I just love the idea of a coral ship.
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A reasonable idea for a hybrid bioship could be a regular, metal ship, but with the habitable part being biological. This would reduce weight in the ship, while still having many of the benefits of a bioship
@hhyyrylainen This is the same thing that I was saying except Man-Made. What about having just large living robots - aka self driving ships with AI and biomechanics ?
I’m pretty sure someone already brought up the point of just genetic engineering bioships, but the very simple counter to that is that you might as well make it from very exotic super metal alloys at that point.
I’m way too burned out on all the ridiculous discussions currently to try to debate this, someone else will have to do it. So I’ll just say the same here as in the sentient plants thread that even if the debate is “won” it doesn’t count unless actual Thrive developers were involved.
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that is actually something i plan to build once create: liftoff comes out. i also plan to make a self repairing steve bot that i can sit inside and control or control from my house and use a camera mod to view where it is to control things
in real life that problem is able to be fixed with a plastic binder. the expanse demonstrates that pretty well
after reading all of this i am surprised nobody talked about a mostly biological ship that produces all of the non-biological parts it uses and repairs ones that are hard to get to. it could have an extremely durable stainless steel or tantalum hafnium carbide shell that it uses like a diatom uses it’s frustule and it has one hole in the front for intaking nutrients and one hole in the back for producing thrust. the thruster would be almost entirely non-biological and have a fuel tank that is similar to that and those fuel tanks would be filled by the bioship processing material into fuel with sunlight as an energy source. it would probably reproduce like deathwake said and use fusion power to generate energy when not in range of a star and use the energy from it either for photosynthesis or to produce electricity which is then used to add electrons to things that need electrons added to be recycled and could be used to compute by the bioship as well as to power it’s motors/muscles to move and grab things as well as perform tasks necessary to life wider than 1mm.