this just reminded me of an experiment where they put a rose in liquid nitrogen and it becomes brittle, easily breaking into pieces. I don’t have a solution to materials being inflexible in space[1][2][3][4][5]
the cells in leaves may be 1 cm thick[6] the glass around it may be 1 meter thick and this glassy leave that is 1 meter thick may be hundreds of meters wide
edit:
I imagined it wouldn’t be pure water, just like how fat cells aren’t made entirely from fat. The water tissue may be mostly water with structural support, cells maybe lost their nucleuses like red blood cells.
Consuming more than the losses
So, if there is a 10% chance that an elysia chlorotica evolves, 5% chance that it evolved from diatoms, if it could go to space 0.1%, if it can go to space in an Enceladus around a Saturn that is close to its sun[7] and has a ring that isn’t all ice
I said a herbivore can make a rocket from a lung to fly higher, a carnivore follows, an evolutionary arms race begins, but whatever. Maybe it couldn’t afford a lung at the first place.[9]
I put this last because it makes me look like I solved all the problems[10]. Okay bye[11]
though it wouldn’t be cold, does low pressure cause inflexibility? ↩︎
how AM I FLEXIBLE? why are some materials flexible, and others not, and how does the situation change in space? ↩︎
actually I just thought a solution it may grow like a lava ball in space that solidifies(cells don’t solidify, they die and become the thing that covers the organism) and you add more lava in it with a straw (that is the analogy to eating and growing), the lava ball grows and cracks but even though the surface crust isn’t flexible only a small amount of lava is exposed to space at any times and it solidifies immideately. later the lava ball divides and buds. but this doesn’t solve how the creature would have moving arms or straw for that matter ↩︎
actually the creature doesn’t have to be able to have arms at all times it can have a gate (not flexible) that opens and closes and it has a tounge in it, it opens the gate and throws its tounge outwards, the tounge sticks to an asteroid like what happens if you try to lick things in -40 degrees. then it pulls the asteroid and eats it. it regenerates the tounge. it grows with the asteroid like a lava ball and buds and reproduces. the atmosphere the gate opens and tounge stays in is as little as possible to prevent gas loss ↩︎
Deathwake
(i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)
109
Why can’t flexible membranes work in space again? just get strong. If inflatable space stations have been reasonable for decades and like BEAM exist idk about others of that type, well, why cant you just be tough enough.
Edit: also i always assume you put a fungus that enjoys being radiated to death all over your skin. Honestly ive reconsidered and think you put them all over you skin, wear a heavy shell that block micrometeorites and equalizes the temperature, and cover that with plants that’re just stupidly tough, but supplied with water by the creature, which eats ice in space to fuel itself. also ive always assumed propellent based systems were less likely than solar sails but probably necessary for lots of fun existing stuff like getting comets or escaping predators so id assume a hybrid system.
you could always just have a tough flexible tight skin like the skinfish from floatin’ and also have melanoplasts in all of your skin cells and encasing the nucleus to protect your DNA from radiation as well as producing sugar for you to use for energy
Deathwake
(i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)
111
that wouldn’t supply much animal-like activity but that’s actually where the solar sails come in. Those could easily be used to maneuver across ridiculous distances while hibernating so you expend almost no energy. Leave the eyes on a passive mode where they detect nearby objects via parallax with all the activity staying in the optic nerve, awakening part of the visual lobe to check if potential nearby objects are edible (other creatures or comet/random chunks of ice), irrelevant (asteroid or trick of the light), or dangerous (predator, asteroid/cloud of micrometeorites headed for the creature), using bursts of most likely water or hydrogen with maneuver to food, ignoring irrelevant stuff, and folding up to become a smaller target, hard to see, and tougher if there’s something dangerous, potentially using bursts of whatever to escape.
edit: massive internal calorie store keeps whatever the radio- and chloroplasts make, fyi
Deathwake
(i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)
113
why? did i accidentally help to design a thing that was predicated on something that didnt work? or do you think solar sails arent good enough for anything?
Solar sails are fast, but they accellerate too slowly to be used for travel between celestial bodies orbiting the same star and you cant decrease your speed with them, and chemical engines are quite inneficent, as such I see no way a creature would be able to evolve them (they would just die).
Also, to reach a body that is orbiting the same body as you there are “launch windows” which happens at a specific angle between the two objects (relative to the body they are orbiting), meaning that the slow acceleration of a solar sail would just make them unable to rendezvous.
The probablity that they actually meet an object in the middle of space by pure chance is so low that a space faring underwater civ might as well emerge before that happens.
And even if they actually meet something (and are still alive), how would they match their orbit to the one of their target? How would they decrease their velocity relative to their target? These are all important things if you want to get close to anything in space.
the solar sails would likely not actually be sails but just leaves and they would probably use something like a magnetohydrodynamic propulsion drive to make it move and be heavy enough to pull the water back to it or just pull it back with bioelectromagnets
i said they would likely just be leaves shaped like solar sails instead of actual solar sails and a magnetohydrodynamic drive could be used to get rid of waste which could be processed into a flammable gas and a reactive compound which that gas could then be ignited in a highly heat resistant chamber with two openings: in(a one way valve activated by too much pressure) and out(a pressure and heat deactivated valve leading directly out of the organism) along with an electricity producing organ to ignite the gas, and an organ for producing electricity
light red = one way valve. dark red=digestive lining. pink= neuronal tissue. green= gas absorbent fluid.
light blue = water with electricity producing and resistant bacteria dark blue = nutrient filled water.
dark white = sclera. light pink = non conductive membrane. dark grey = dense abiotic heat resistant damage resistant matter. light grey = clockwise fan unless it is around the brain
purplish grey = counterclockwise fan. black = photosynthetic, damage resistant tissue. gold = highly conductive wire. copper = copper wire. magenta = highly conductive neuronal tissue unless at the excretory sphincter.
this example is a colonial organism
This just means they have to calculate[1] when and where to launch/keep accelerating to and start their deceleration[2] early on. Alternatively, they can have tenticles and evolve to tolerate crashing into asteroids and holding them so they don’t bounce back.
This is not necessary. If you open a gap on a pouch filed with pressurised gas, gasses would already exit with a high velocity, or you can use
Also, I can’t pinpoint light red and light pink on the picture or see the difference between the 3 greys and gold from copper.
similar to our brains calculating where to place our feet when we are running in an uneven terrain ↩︎
decelerating is automatic on a planet with an atmosphere ↩︎
the copper is only in one spot and is more orange, the light pink is a membrane in one spot(around the fans electric bacteria), the greys are easy to tell what they are without needing to know their color
The rest of my reply explains why this is impossible.
Their shape is irrelevant.
Chemical rockets are very inneficent, meaning that they would have to use very big amounts of fuel to make significant changes in velocity, which means they will have more mass, which means they will need smore fuel to change yhwir velocity in a significant way, whoch means they will have more mass. Also if they dont reach a place where they can get more resources to create the fuel they would just remain stranded (and not all celestial bodies have the same composition, so they would have to get lucky).
