Why bioships AREN'T viable

[Patrick Degan]

I only got one facetious comment on the bioships thread before it was locked down. Pity because it was looking like a lively debate.

There's been a recent explosion in SF media in regards to organic technology. It's become the new ubertoy for writers to play with. Although the concept extends further back in the medium, it seems that ever since G.K. Drexler's writings on nanotechnology came out, SF writers have seized on the idea, ascribing to it all sorts of characteristics and capabilities supposedly far superior to a machined device. But none of them have thought the problem all the way through, and neither they nor the technowankers have really asked "What if something goes wrong?".

About the most intelligent thing ever said in Star Trek was Scotty's observation in The Search For Spock that "The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain". The pro-biotech crowd points to the complexity of biological systems. Biological systems in nature are complex because evolution is a trial-and-error process building over millions of years. Systems get layered over one another, redundancies are created, and traces of earlier evolution persist long past the existence of the original form which embodied them and long past any true survival necessity for such systems —the human appendix and incisor teeth, to name two examples. It has also been noted that biological systems are complex to make up for their structural fragility. Cells die at the rate of millions per day and have to be constantly replaced, in a process which requires a continual intake and expenditure of energy to maintain. And when senecense sets in, there is no way to reverse the progressive increase in damage and breakdown until death of the organism ensues. And until that point, the efficency of the organism's energy expenditure decreases measurably.

Pro-biotech advocates point to examples of insect armour and make the primary mistake of trying to scale-up the organism into something useable to humans. However, even at the insect level, while chitinous exoskeletons may provide a great deal of protection for the insect on its own scale, against other insects, it will not survive for a second the overpressures that shell is subjected to when you bring your boot down upon it. Considering the stresses a spacecraft is likely to be subjected to, particularly from the temperatures and pressures of its own engine output, having engine chambers constructed out of biological material would not be a good idea. You may have trillions of cells within the matrix of your material, but that cellular structure cannot provide sufficent mechanical strength or thermal resistance to contain the engine output. Some technowankers will go so far as to propose "growing" hard materials. However, iron has never been observed to grow in nature and neither has any other metallic element. Biological systems are based upon hydrocarbon compounds, and silicon-based life has been hypothesised, but neither material could conceivably withstand the stresses which would be generated within a fusion chamber. The likeliest event that would occur upon firing up the engines for the first time is that the chambers would explode.

Pro-biotech advocates point to the capacity of biological systems to self-repair. This is true as far as it goes, only it ignores several salient facts: that time is involved in regeneration of serious damage, that the draw upon the organism's energy reserves so accelerates that the organism is usually incapacitated until the damage is substantially repaired, and that in cases where the damage is serious enough, the organism suffers a permanent weakness in the area of damage. There is no way to accelerate the rate of repair substantially, and in the event that it does occur, it is usually a runaway process characterised by genetic damage. In other words, cancer. Or autoimmune disease.

Once a biological system is destabilised, it is extremely difficult to ever correct the destabilisation. Deterioriation follows at an ever accelerating rate as the organism draws more and more energy to fuel a cell-repair process which is being increasingly compromised until the organism's repair systems can no longer cope with the spreading damage and no longer can take in sufficent fuel to provide the energy to maintain it. And some forms of damage are subtle and nearly undetectable to begin with that they evade the organism's capacity to detect symptoms of damage until it has spread far enough to make recovery impossible, as is the case with several forms of cancer.

The more complex any system is, the more prone it is to breakdown, because of how much more can go wrong and how much more difficult it becomes to detect damage. Any engineer knows this. And the very complexity of biological systems is one of the primary arguments against it from any engineering standpoint.

"The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."

Does anybody remember the British SF series Blake's 7? Marvellous TV series which ran only 52 episodes and centred upon a crew of convicted criminals who manage to hijack a superadvanced, intelligent starship and use it to lead a revolution against the fascist Terran Federation which rules the galaxy. Great because the series ended with the most brutal depiction of the fact that there are times when the Good Guys don't win in the end. Anyway, the central starship of the series, the Liberator, was controlled by an intelligent computer (Zen) and the ship itself, though clearly a manufactured vessel, was engineered somewhat like a living organism, though the exact nature of this quality is never specified beyond its ability to repair its own damage and regenerate its power banks. In the closing episode to the third season, "Terminal", the Liberator at one point is run at high velocity through a nebula composed of "minute fluid particles" and sustains minor hull damage. Some of the "fluid particles" are absorbed into the ship's structure through the breach. For the rest of the episode, the Liberator progressively falls apart. The chemical reaction of the fluid particles with the starship's systems and whatever materials they are composed of causes an increasing breakdown of circuitry and structure which soon spreads throughout the entire ship. The power banks are rapidly drained as the self-repair systems attempt to keep up with the spreading damage and fail. By the time Zen is able to identify that there is a problem (due to having lost some of its own sensors in the area of the hull breach), goo is literally oozing out of the bulkheads, bubbling up out of control panels, and eating away at the ship inside and out. The AI is no longer able to take the ship out of orbit of the planet she's at, much less initiate FTL, and can only concentrate its diminishing reserves on maintaining the teleport so that the crew can evacuate before the ship disintegrates completely. The damage spreads to Zen, which becomes progressively "senile" as system breakdown accelerates. And when a Federation crew seizes control of the ship and attempts to pilot her back to Earth, the propulsion stress destroys the vessel.

The very complexity biotech advocates worship would tend to make it far more difficult to identify and repair problems, and the writer of the B7 episode was cogent of this inherent defect with a "living" starship and bothered to ask himself the question "What if something goes wrong?". A spacecraft needs only as much complexity as it absolutely necessary for it to fulfill its function and only in specific areas of operation and construction. It's far simpler and more economical (from every standpoint) in the long run to simply build a ship in the conventional manner and maintain a store of spare parts and materials, as well as repair drones, to handle problems instead of opting for a hideously complicated system which will not use energy efficently, cannot withstand stress and damage as well as a manufactured structure, and may be prone to degenerative breakdown which could prove irreversible. For all these reasons, an organic starship simply would not be a feasible proposition.

[Darth Wong]

Very well done, Patrick. Not that it will sway the biotech people ...

At the heart of the biotech fetish is the same sense of human self-importance that drives social phenomena such as organized religion. Unwilling to accept the gross inadequacies of homo sapiens and all that they imply for our self-proclaimed belief in our own importance in an unimaginably vast universe, the biotech fanboy is obsessed with the notion that biological organisms such as ourselves contain some kind of magic which can never be duplicated through artificial means.

From this psychological complex springs all of the various bone-headed attempts to exaggerate the computing power of the human brain, the inane belief that organisms which can self-repair minor injuries are superior to artificial systems which can withstand heat, pressure, and shock orders of magnitude greater without any injury at all, and of course, the asinine belief that biological organisms are efficient.

[weemadando]

I believe that a ship with organic/biological systems may well be a possibility. But an entirely biological vessel is just stupid.

[data_link]

I believe that a ship with organic/biological systems may well be a possibility. But an entirely biological vessel is just stupid.

Oh sure, it's entirely possible. But wouldn't you rather have a ship that works?

[weemadando]

I believe that a ship with organic/biological systems may well be a possibility. But an entirely biological vessel is just stupid.

Oh sure, it's entirely possible. But wouldn't you rather have a ship that works?

Why not have a biological process for C02/02 conversion that won't draw excess power from your reactors/batteries? Why not utilise biological methods for filtration and other special needs? How about having a giant genetically engineered kidney as your water purification plant?

[MirrorUniverseSpy1]

That kidney idea was cool! A giant kidney as a filtration system.
Not bad.

[Enlightenment]

Why not have a biological process for C02/02 conversion that won't draw excess power from your reactors/batteries?

Biological systems do not constitute a magic escape clause from the law of conservation of mass-energy.

Why not utilise biological methods for filtration and other special needs?

Why 'why not?' With the exception of consumer products and art, things aren't designed on the basis of 'why not?' or 'it'd be cool.' Things are designed one way because it works better than the alternatives. There's no point in using biological methods for e.g. water filtration unless they're cheaper or better adapted to the needs of the specific case than all other alternatives.

[Shinova]

I think the only way bioships would have any chance of being viable would be if they were incredibly advanced (Cancer-speed growth that can be contained, some way to deal with radiation, incredible protection of genetic material, etc). And if they could perfectly copy technological methods of power generation and be able to convert the power generated into energy its body can use, but that'll probably take genetic engineering far beyond the capabilities of any normal interstellar race.

I think a ship made up of psionic energy is even more viable than a biological ship.

[Lord_Xerxes]

Indeed, you'd have to find a way to have these giant organs completely self sufficient. One organ would be dependent on others for blood/other nutrients. These organs would age, wear out, and die, just like our own. Others would have to be grown, grafted/implanted into place in order to replace the old ones, etc.

The reality is that these processes aren't as efficient as mechanical creations. It's much easier to simply replace an old water filtration unit with a few twists of some screws/bolts than it would be to surgically replace a organ and make sure it isn't rejected.

There's just too many problems with the bio-tech. Machines are cheaper, faster, more efficient, and easier.

[TrailerParkJawa]

Let's assume we can make a living bio ship, and it has some level of intelligence.

Physics and engineering aside, is it moral or ethical to breed ships?

We have laws against breeding dogs for fighting. Most people deplore cock-fights. Why is it all of a sudden okay to breed a ship for combat?

It is one thing to raise cows and pigs for food. Its another to make a semi-sentient/fully sentient creature to fight and die in space.

Even if the ship is not for combat, then you still have to ask if creating entirely new life forms is okay?

[data_link]

Why not have a biological process for C02/02 conversion that won't draw excess power from your reactors/batteries?

Because you'd still have to feed the cells, and that would take at least as much material as your batteries would need to store energy for the conversion process.

Why not utilise biological methods for filtration and other special needs? How about having a giant genetically engineered kidney as your water purification plant?

Um... because technological methods are A. simpler, B. easier to maintain, and C. would you want to drink stuff out of a gaint kidney?

There's just too many problems with the bio-tech. Machines are cheaper, faster, more efficient, and easier.

Pretty much the only thing that biological systems are good at is feeding other biological systems. Everything else... they suck.

Physics and engineering aside, is it moral or ethical to breed ships?

We have laws against breeding dogs for fighting. Most people deplore cock-fights. Why is it all of a sudden okay to breed a ship for combat?

It is one thing to raise cows and pigs for food. Its another to make a semi-sentient/fully sentient creature to fight and die in space.

Even if the ship is not for combat, then you still have to ask if creating entirely new life forms is okay?

There is no moral problem with creating entirely new life-forms to serve our purposes. There is, however, a problem with creating new sentiences to serve our purposes. This will become a problem in technological ships as well, because already we have computers that can rival the human brain in processing power, and by the time we are building starships, they will have far outstripped the human brain, and so the question of whether the intelligences of these ships constitue sentience will become important. Consciousness is not nessecarily a problem limited to biology.

[SWPIGWANG]

At the heart of the biotech fetish is the same sense of human self-importance that drives social phenomena such as organized religion.

That is a great generalization that is really the greatest BS ever. Since I don't need to prove a negative, the burden of proof is on you.

the biotech fanboy is obsessed with the notion that biological organisms such as ourselves contain some kind of magic which can never be duplicated through artificial means.

What are you smoking? The idea is to take the best part of biological organisms and duplicate it artificially while combining with other aspect of our technology. If that is not the case they'd be worshiping nature designs like human beings and abhored by attempts at designing our own systems. I'm sure some day we'll take apart of biotech and incorporate it into whatever nano or otherwise technology, but by that time the boundary between bio and 'artifical' technology would have faded and the whole debate is pointless. Yes by that time we wouldn't need nature as our guild, but we aren't there yet.

From this psychological complex springs all of the various bone-headed attempts to exaggerate the computing power of the human brain, the inane belief that organisms which can self-repair minor injuries are superior to artificial systems which can withstand heat, pressure, and shock orders of magnitude greater without any injury at all, and of course, the asinine belief that biological organisms are efficient.

I guess this is why this is the SLAM forum, because one must slam people here. Anyway, organisms are superior in a narrowly defined roles. That is saying because wood is not as strong as steel means we shouldn't use wood? What kind of BS is that?

I'll conceed the biological systems based on known materials and methods will never match well designed artifical systems in terms of strengh, heat tolerance and such as is probably unsuited for most primary systems on a space ship. But it is not useless as some of some seem to imply.


Remember one thing, BIOLOGY IS NOT ENGINEERED LIKE A 'ARTIFICAL' SYSTEM (at least examples we have). Unlike most systems engineered by man, it is highly ductile with far more layers of redunduncy build it. Sure it doesn't mean that it has infinite regeneration without cost or can't suffer from progressive failure, but it is less likely to suffer from catastrophic failure because of failure of a minor part by its architecture and can recover from it better. The level of complexity did not cause the chance of failure to increase linearly because of evolutionary design rather than top down design. The cost is that it is highly energy inefficient and lowered tolerance to extream stress. But I get headaches, not general protection faults and blue screen of death. Sure it would be possible to replicate that using artifical systems, but it would be difficult and in some cases it would be better to just take a short cut and take what nature have designed for us. Also on the list is that biology have provided a set of microsopic machines already designed. The limits of chemisty and pressure to survive means that it is limited in scope compared to what is possible with molecular construction, but it is made already unlike much of the nano-dream that is at least decades away. I'm quite sure our first attempts at large scale nano-tech application outside controlled environment would replicate every problem organisms suffer from, only worst.

The more complex any system is, the more prone it is to breakdown, because of how much more can go wrong and how much more difficult it becomes to detect damage.

The more complex any system is, the more obvious the stupidity the designer is.

Evolution is a smart designer that doesn't optimalize very well.

If we need a system as complex as a biological one, we might need to rely on it.

[Admiral Valdemar]

When did the AI on the Liberator become Zen? I thought it was Orac most the time? Oh well, very well done essay though, I shall post it in the same thread on SB.com.

[Zoink]

I agree with the premise, technological ships are simpler and easier to build than bio-ships, and are therefore better.

But some of the limitations, ie. damaged being is usually incapacitated, slow regeneration, can't deposit metals (like we do calcium) to create structures, etc, aren't necessarily true.

Would a bio-system that didn't react to pain necessarily be incapacitated?

While we have never seen (from my own recollection) of organisms depositing metal, does that mean it’s impossible for an organism to, say, have some electrodes to deposit metal from a solution onto a surface?

[Darth Wong]

I agree with the premise, technological ships are simpler and easier to build than bio-ships, and are therefore better.

But some of the limitations, ie. damaged being is usually incapacitated, slow regeneration, can't deposit metals (like we do calcium) to create structures, etc, aren't necessarily true.

The onus would be on you to show that they can do these things.

Would a bio-system that didn't react to pain necessarily be incapacitated?

Pain is a signal that damage is occurring. A bio-system that doesn't feel pain would not even know it was damaged. It need not react to pain in the same way we do, but pain is a necessary feedback.

In any case, the incapacity is caused by the easily damaged nature of the biosystem, and that won't change because the underlying materials are weak.

While we have never seen (from my own recollection) of organisms depositing metal, does that mean it’s impossible for an organism to, say, have some electrodes to deposit metal from a solution onto a surface?

Sure, if you want to take a ridiculously slow manufacturing method like electro-deposition and kludge some kind of biosystem to do it even less efficiently. You DO realize that electro-dep parts cost a small fortune because the process is so goddamned slow, right?

[Zoink]

hhmm.. I guess if one were to build a spaceship right now, the one system that would be biological is the mission control system (ie human crew).

For a mission to mars, While you *could* send a completely robotic probe, a human crew is going to be a lot more versatile.

Instead of a bunch of rovers, if you send an expert in interplanetary geology and myself, you'd have two amazing "bio-systems" ::

One that does detailed analysis of the martian landscape, calculating age, looking for fossils, spotting interesting things to investigate and such.

And another equally amazing system that jumps up and down, shouts, laughs manically, makes angels in the martian sand, fills his pockets with martian rocks to sell on ebay, and trys to get into the records books a million times by being the first to do everything on mars...

Ok so the second system is easily replaced....

[Warspite]

Excelent post Patrick, it sums up everything much nicely. I don't know why you people keep discussing the same thing, we all know bioships are NOT feasible, why keep reashing it again?

I think every SF series is jumping on bioships, just to show off their arts skills in modelling, after all they aren't good for anything else, except for wall trophies.

[Warspite]

How about having a giant genetically engineered kidney as your water purification plant?

Water purification systems work on the inverse osmosis process, basically a semi-permeable menbrane and a density gradient. They are only require a simple pump to circulate the water, and if any part breaks down it's easily replaceable. A kidney couldn't approach this level of praticality and efficiency.

[Patrick Degan]

When did the AI on the Liberator become Zen? I thought it was Orac most the time?

Zen was the onboard AI which controlled the Liberator. ORAC was a self-contained AI invented by the renegade scientist Ensor. Blake (and later Avon) inherited ORAC after the inventor's death. ORAC was characterised as a wholly artificial "brain' with the ability to tap into other computers at will. It could and did occasionally override Zen to control the Liberator.

[Malecoda]

"What's wrong now?"

"Kidney stones. We have to modify the ship's diet to try to get it to stop making struvite crystals"

"But it doesn't have a stomach!"

"Exactly. One of us is going to have to go in and regurgitate this CD cat food into its urethra."

[Darth Yoshi]

"What's wrong now?"

"Kidney stones. We have to modify the ship's diet to try to get it to stop making struvite crystals"

"But it doesn't have a stomach!"

"Exactly. One of us is going to have to go in and regurgitate this CD cat food into its urethra."

That was weird.