Are biological spacecraft viable?

[Enlightenment]

I see no reason why someone would want to fight in/with a living spacecraft.

Point of order. For sufficiently advanced technology, alive does not necessarily mean biological. Sentient ships with computational intelligences (such as 2001's Discovery and the shps of the Culture) would fit most reasonable definitions of being alive but they're by no means biological. There are definite advantages to an AI-alive ship, specifically in that no crew would be required and that any reasonable AIs would be able to think far faster than any human.

[data_link]

What about organisms that are not carbon-based?

I don't remember any non-carbon based lifeforms on Earth...

Of course. This is all hypothetical, remember?

Silicon wouldn't work any better... do you see any ships armored in silicon? No? I rest my case.

[Peregrin Toker]

Only a fool would even conceive the idea of organic spacecraft. Organisms cannot survive in the vacuum of space.

To boot, being the crew of an organic spaceship would be a very icky experience - as any LEXX fan probably will know.* (although the LEXX actually is half organic and half metallic)

*I haven't watched LEXX, but I've heard that the ship's interior is covered with living viscera!

[Crown]

Point of order. For sufficiently advanced technology, alive does not necessarily mean biological. Sentient ships with computational intelligences (such as 2001's Discovery and the shps of the Culture) would fit most reasonable definitions of being alive but they're by no means biological. There are definite advantages to an AI-alive ship, specifically in that no crew would be required and that any reasonable AIs would be able to think far faster than any human.

I agree completely, but the thread is centered on 'biological' ships. The only thing I can think off as an advantage (I use this very loosely) is a 'self repair' kind of skin. But that's totally out-weighed by the huge disadvantages.

[Coalition]

To boot, being the crew of an organic spaceship would be a very icky experience - as any LEXX fan probably will know.* (although the LEXX actually is half organic and half metallic)

*I haven't watched LEXX, but I've heard that the ship's interior is covered with living viscera!

Not to mention that the 'food' was green goo, and the ship itself got senile after 6000 years. Of course, its own immune system helped cure the sex-change problem that occurred.

Still, a funny show. Anyone want to visit Boomtown (before Prince attacked it)?

I agree completely, but the thread is centered on 'biological' ships. The only thing I can think off as an advantage (I use this very loosely) is a 'self repair' kind of skin. But that's totally out-weighed by the huge disadvantages.

Too true. It has to survive combat in order to self-repair, and the chances of it surviving are remote. I figure the advantages would be:

1) fairly cheap maintenance and self-repair (feed it nutrients, and park it near a star)
2) some stealtth abilities (reduced radar, lower infrared)

So a living ship might be perfect for pirates, but if it goes up against an actual warship, that warship's crew will be eating well for a while.

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

Organic ships are worthless.

Where will you get the food? Organics are incredibly inefficient, so you'll need a lot of it. And how do you keep the living cells from drying out in vacuum? Carapaces? Similarly worthless. Carapaces are ceramics - i.e. brittle. Space dust would wear it away before it could be regrown.

[Nova Andromeda]

--It seems to me that people aren't really considering the strenghts of an "organic" ship. First of all a ship composed entirely out of organic material is worthless. However, many organisms don't solely use organic materials. I see no reason that highly advanced "organic" tech. could not be used to micro fabricate structures at the atomic level in a energy efficient manner. This would be very useful for a ship that is far from base and would need to manufacture and repair everything on its own while traveling through space. Instead of having to carry many different spare parts (or having a "build anything" device) you could simply use organic systems to build or repair ship parts from raw/damaged material. "Organic" tech. gives a ship extreme amounts of fexability if you don't have a "build anything" device.

[Darth Wong]

--It seems to me that people aren't really considering the strenghts of an "organic" ship. First of all a ship composed entirely out of organic material is worthless. However, many organisms don't solely use organic materials. I see no reason that highly advanced "organic" tech. could not be used to micro fabricate structures at the atomic level in a energy efficient manner. This would be very useful for a ship that is far from base and would need to manufacture and repair everything on its own while traveling through space. Instead of having to carry many different spare parts (or having a "build anything" device) you could simply use organic systems to build or repair ship parts from raw/damaged material. "Organic" tech. gives a ship extreme amounts of fexability if you don't have a "build anything" device.

Organic technology doesn't work even in principle without chemically reactive and semi-permeable base components, neither of which make any sense for armour or space travel. What you're talking about is nano-repair, and that's overrated too (think: thermal capacitance).

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

--It seems to me that people aren't really considering the strenghts of an "organic" ship. First of all a ship composed entirely out of organic material is worthless. However, many organisms don't solely use organic materials. I see no reason that highly advanced "organic" tech. could not be used to micro fabricate structures at the atomic level in a energy efficient manner. This would be very useful for a ship that is far from base and would need to manufacture and repair everything on its own while traveling through space. Instead of having to carry many different spare parts (or having a "build anything" device) you could simply use organic systems to build or repair ship parts from raw/damaged material. "Organic" tech. gives a ship extreme amounts of fexability if you don't have a "build anything" device.

This method of microscopic building is useless for anything apart from protein synthesis.
It takes 18 years to grow a human being to maturity.
How about a starship? Wouldn't regenerating damage take much longer than what you could do if you had a proper repair yard fixing it?
And if parts needed to be manufactured, then keep a machine shop on board.

[Nova Andromeda]

--It seems to me that people aren't really considering the strenghts of an "organic" ship. First of all a ship composed entirely out of organic material is worthless. However, many organisms don't solely use organic materials. I see no reason that highly advanced "organic" tech. could not be used to micro fabricate structures at the atomic level in a energy efficient manner. This would be very useful for a ship that is far from base and would need to manufacture and repair everything on its own while traveling through space. Instead of having to carry many different spare parts (or having a "build anything" device) you could simply use organic systems to build or repair ship parts from raw/damaged material. "Organic" tech. gives a ship extreme amounts of fexability if you don't have a "build anything" device.

Organic technology doesn't work even in principle without chemically reactive and semi-permeable base components, neither of which make any sense for armour or space travel. What you're talking about is nano-repair, and that's overrated too (think: thermal capacitance).

--Yes, I'm talking about nano-repair and fabrication which should be useful for most "soft" ship components of which there are probably a great many. I'm not sure if it is possible to fabricate things like metal alloys in a time effecient manner with biological systems though. However, the power of biological systems is the ability to reduce/eliminate energy barriers in chemical reactions. This leads to highly efficient reactions and generation of much less waste heat. After all the reason we need all that heat to create alloys or things like diamonds is to overcome energy barriers not to make the reaction favorable (in many cases at least). I still agree that the repair/fabrication systems would still be worthless if you tried to use them for something like armor.

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

Organic technology doesn't work even in principle without chemically reactive and semi-permeable base components, neither of which make any sense for armour or space travel. What you're talking about is nano-repair, and that's overrated too (think: thermal capacitance).

Actually , the whole point of a cell membrane is that it is largely chemically unreactive (to shield the cytoplasm from external conditions).

Still, this unreativity means jack shit because almost all proteins are denatured above 100 degrees.

[Nova Andromeda]

--It seems to me that people aren't really considering the strenghts of an "organic" ship. First of all a ship composed entirely out of organic material is worthless. However, many organisms don't solely use organic materials. I see no reason that highly advanced "organic" tech. could not be used to micro fabricate structures at the atomic level in a energy efficient manner. This would be very useful for a ship that is far from base and would need to manufacture and repair everything on its own while traveling through space. Instead of having to carry many different spare parts (or having a "build anything" device) you could simply use organic systems to build or repair ship parts from raw/damaged material. "Organic" tech. gives a ship extreme amounts of fexability if you don't have a "build anything" device.

This method of microscopic building is useless for anything apart from protein synthesis.
It takes 18 years to grow a human being to maturity.
How about a starship? Wouldn't regenerating damage take much longer than what you could do if you had a proper repair yard fixing it?
And if parts needed to be manufactured, then keep a machine shop on board.

--Don't be silly. E-coli divide every 11 min. given optimal conditions. Some dogs grow to a body weight equaling humans in only 3 years. Larger animals grow a great deal faster. You have to remember that nature does what works not what is necessarily best. In addition, you can't keep a manufacturing plant on a space ship for every exotic part it has unless it is a very large ship. You can, however, keep the genome and cells necessary to build all those parts in a small space on an organic ship. I'm also assumming that this is highly advanced organic tech. where the people can easily manipulate the organisms and have built them for efficiency, etc.

[Nova Andromeda]

Organic technology doesn't work even in principle without chemically reactive and semi-permeable base components, neither of which make any sense for armour or space travel. What you're talking about is nano-repair, and that's overrated too (think: thermal capacitance).

Actually , the whole point of a cell membrane is that it is largely chemically unreactive (to shield the cytoplasm from external conditions).

Still, this unreativity means jack shit because almost all proteins are denatured above 100 degrees.

--The point of a cell membrane is not to be chemically unreactive! Where the hell did you learn that? It's point is to partition space, but serves a number of other functions too. In addition, why do we care that most natural proteins denature at 100 degrees C? Biological systems can do all sorts of exotic chemical reactions without boiling the water they are in.

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

.

--The point of a cell membrane is not to be chemically unreactive! Where the hell did you learn that? It's point is to partition space, but serves a number of other functions too.
[/quote[

Where did YOU learn that from? The CYTOPLASM conducts the majority of the reactions, NOT the plasma membrane! The only reactions in the plasma membrane worth mentioning are active transport!

In addition, why do we care that most natural proteins denature at 100 degrees C? Biological systems can do all sorts of exotic chemical reactions without boiling the water they are in.

We care because in space they will be exposed to extremely high and extremely low temperatures. We care because the only reason why cells can do the reactions they can is because of ENZYMES which again denature at temperature extremes.

[Nova Andromeda]

.

--The point of a cell membrane is not to be chemically unreactive! Where the hell did you learn that? It's point is to partition space, but serves a number of other functions too.
[/quote[]
Where did YOU learn that from? The CYTOPLASM conducts the majority of the reactions, NOT the plasma membrane! The only reactions in the plasma membrane worth mentioning are active transport!

In addition, why do we care that most natural proteins denature at 100 degrees C? Biological systems can do all sorts of exotic chemical reactions without boiling the water they are in.

We care because in space they will be exposed to extremely high and extremely low temperatures. We care because the only reason why cells can do the reactions they can is because of ENZYMES which again denature at temperature extremes.

--First, cell membranes perform all sorts of useful reactions necessary for cell signaling, transport, movement, adhesion, etc. I suggest a cellular biology or biochemistry class. The cytoplasm conducts a great deal of the cellular reactions, but there are also many in the nucleus as well. Regardless, it makes no difference. You would have to be an idiot to put your soft systems on the outside of your ship as opposed to the inside where they are protected by things like ... armor which organism could be made to manufacture. Besides, tempurature would not be the biggest worry for a cell in space. It would be radiation damage.

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

--Don't be silly. E-coli divide every 11 min. given optimal
conditions.

And your ideal ship is made of...(drum roll) E. Coli. Whoop-de-do.

Given optimal conditions.

Vacuum and absolute zero aren't exactly optimal, are they?

Some dogs grow to a body weight equaling humans in only 3 years. Larger animals grow a great deal faster.

But what did these selfsame larger animals have to do to get that big? Metabolize matter, the majority of which is simply excreted as useless material.

You have to remember that nature does what works not what is necessarily best.

Which is why Nature doesn't build organic starships.

In addition, you can't keep a manufacturing plant on a space ship for every exotic part it has unless it is a very large ship.

True. But this is beside the point. If you get into a situation where you have to replace every single last exotic part you are pretty screwed anyway, so not being able to build them all doesn't necessarily damn you more than being able to.

For normal malfunctions a machine shop and a supply of spares will do.
Exotic components would be pre-manufactured, saving the hassle of having to manually build them on the sppot, where conditions would be less than ideal.

You can, however, keep the genome and cells necessary to build all those parts in a small space on an organic ship.

You are correct. But the information needed to produce the parts could be kept on a microchip, which doesn't take up much space either. And don't forget if you are to build the parts quickly you need a LOT of producer cells and the materials to keep these cells alive.

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

--First, cell membranes perform all sorts of useful reactions necessary for cell signaling, transport, movement, adhesion, etc. I suggest a cellular biology or biochemistry class.

True.
But all that is ancillary. It is the CELL SURFACE PROTEINS which conduct these reactions, not the membrane itself. Last I heard the plasma membrane was pretty damn unreactive - otherwise it would decompose in WATER.

And BTW I just finished a 2-year A-level biology course a few weeks ago, but I am half-dead from exhaustion. So please pardon my inability to encyclopedically recall every important detail.

The cytoplasm conducts a great deal of the cellular reactions, but there are also many in the nucleus as well.

IIRC all the metabolic reactions took place IN the cytoplasm - nuclear reactions are primary concerned with DNA transcription and replication.

Regardless, it makes no difference. You would have to be an idiot to put your soft systems on the outside of your ship

We agree here.

as opposed to the inside where they are protected by things like ... armor which organism could be made to manufacture. Besides, tempurature would not be the biggest worry for a cell in space. It would be radiation damage.

I still cannot see how extreme temperatures (of hot AND cold) and dehydration fail to pose a threat to an organism. Granted it is a large organism. But how does it maintain its homeostatic conditions?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Shadow battlecrabs, Species 8472, Vorlons...all of these are biological ships.

Question is, are biological spacecraft feasible?

Carbon-based organic compounds have pitiful resistance to heat/cold variations, radiation, and corrosion. They're useless for starships.

Yup. I always saw them as cool and original like Maya and S8472, but since becoming a undergrad biologist I have to laugh at the thought of using biological organisms for space.

I mean, you don't have a biological car for work do you?

Biological things are good for many issues, but space travel ain't one of them.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Just a note, even if such a ship was viable, what of the high risk UVA, UVB and especially UVC rays to the cells?

The last thing you want is a malignant myeloma on your ship hull, asteroids and stellar anomalies would be the least of your problems.

[Darth Wong]

Not to mention the possibility that an organic ship could quite literally get cancer. Anything short of 100% perfect replication leaves that possibility open; cancer is cellular evolution in action.

[Darth Wong]

--Don't be silly. E-coli divide every 11 min. given optimal conditions. Some dogs grow to a body weight equaling humans in only 3 years. Larger animals grow a great deal faster.

And a 3-ton slab of steel can be poured and processed in an hour. Shaped components like coke cans can be manufactured at a rate of literally MILLIONS PER DAY from just one midsize stamping press.

In addition, you can't keep a manufacturing plant on a space ship for every exotic part it has unless it is a very large ship.

Not a manufacturing plant; a machine shop. Real warships have machine shops for that reason, and it seems to work fine, doesn't it? And have you ever worked in a factory? A machine shop can manufacture all manner of complex components from raw materials and a small number of standardized spares if necessary, because it's much more flexible than a manufacturing plant. And a typical machine shop is actually quite small.

You can, however, keep the genome and cells necessary to build all those parts in a small space on an organic ship.

The manufacture of metallic components using biological organisms is not a workable method.

I'm also assumming that this is highly advanced organic tech. where the people can easily manipulate the organisms and have built them for efficiency, etc.

Even if they have, organisms do not process elemental metals very well. Moreover, they cannot co-ordinate their activities to grow things accurately.

The manufacturing accuracy of biological organisms is simply pitiful. The average human is not even close to being symmetrical, even in such gross measurements as arm and leg lengths.

[Nova Andromeda]

--Don't be silly. E-coli divide every 11 min. given optimal
conditions.

And your ideal ship is made of...(drum roll) E. Coli. Whoop-de-do.

--Come on man! This was an example of how fast biological systems can replicate! It was not an example of the building materials the ship would be made out of. Think before wasting bandwidth like this. I'm not an idiot.

Some dogs grow to a body weight equaling humans in only 3 years. Larger animals grow a great deal faster.

But what did these selfsame larger animals have to do to get that big? Metabolize matter, the majority of which is simply excreted as useless material.

--You are assuming this advanced organic tech. would be using natural processes without heavy modification/optimization. Biological system are very good at recycling waste products. For instance, a plant or bacteria could use a lot of the waste from a dog. Biological systems give you control at the atomic level (with sufficient tech.). It becomes a matter of power generation and energy transfer to a large extent. A ship without the capability to repair every criticle system has real problems far from repair facilities. A bioship vastly reduces this problem since it can probably replace/repair most criticle systems.

In addition, you can't keep a manufacturing plant on a space ship for every exotic part it has unless it is a very large ship.

True. But this is beside the point. If you get into a situation where you have to replace every single last exotic part you are pretty screwed anyway, so not being able to build them all doesn't necessarily damn you more than being able to.

You can, however, keep the genome and cells necessary to build all those parts in a small space on an organic ship.

You are correct. But the information needed to produce the parts could be kept on a microchip, which doesn't take up much space either. And don't forget if you are to build the parts quickly you need a LOT of producer cells and the materials to keep these cells alive.

--Of course you need to the raw material and the energy! This doesn't change for other tech. unless you can create elements out of subatomic particles. The benefit is that a cell is equivalent to a microchip you drop into a solution which then proceeds to build itself. Since cells can rapidly reproduce generation of smaller components should be fairly quick, but larger components wouldn't be that much slower since growth is exponential under optimal conditions (i.e., the conditions you would produce these parts under).

--First, cell membranes perform all sorts of useful reactions necessary for cell signaling, transport, movement, adhesion, etc. I suggest a cellular biology or biochemistry class.

True.
But all that is ancillary. It is the CELL SURFACE PROTEINS which conduct these reactions, not the membrane itself. Last I heard the plasma membrane was pretty damn unreactive - otherwise it would decompose in WATER.

--The cell membrane includes stuff like transport proteins, glycosylation, some reactive lipids used for various purposes, etc. It is not as simple and mundane as you seem to think. The only reason I'm responding to this last quote is to help clear up this matter. It has no bearing on the overall discussion anymore.

The cytoplasm conducts a great deal of the cellular reactions, but there are also many in the nucleus as well.

IIRC all the metabolic reactions took place IN the cytoplasm - nuclear reactions are primary concerned with DNA transcription and replication.

--However, many of the non-metabolic reactions are criticle to replication and cannot be dismissed.

... as opposed to the inside where they are protected by things like ... armor which organism could be made to manufacture. Besides, tempurature would not be the biggest worry for a cell in space. It would be radiation damage.

I still cannot see how extreme temperatures (of hot AND cold) and dehydration fail to pose a threat to an organism. Granted it is a large organism. But how does it maintain its homeostatic conditions?

--The outer shell of the ship would be composed of armor which would protect the internal parts. Generation of new parts would be done under controlled conditions. For instance, once might be able to grow cells which produce armor plates once the organism matured (sort of like a clam produces pearls).

[Majin Gojira]

Shadow battlecrabs, Species 8472, Vorlons...all of these are biological ships.


Question is, are biological spacecraft feasible?

Unless we find the genetic material of something along the lines of KING GHIDORAH, then hell no.

[Nova Andromeda]

--Don't be silly. E-coli divide every 11 min. given optimal conditions. Some dogs grow to a body weight equaling humans in only 3 years. Larger animals grow a great deal faster.

And a 3-ton slab of steel can be poured and processed in an hour. Shaped components like coke cans can be manufactured at a rate of literally MILLIONS PER DAY from just one midsize stamping press.

In addition, you can't keep a manufacturing plant on a space ship for every exotic part it has unless it is a very large ship.

Not a manufacturing plant; a machine shop. Real warships have machine shops for that reason, and it seems to work fine, doesn't it? And have you ever worked in a factory? A machine shop can manufacture all manner of complex components from raw materials and a small number of standardized spares if necessary, because it's much more flexible than a manufacturing plant. And a typical machine shop is actually quite small.

You can, however, keep the genome and cells necessary to build all those parts in a small space on an organic ship.

The manufacture of metallic components using biological organisms is not a workable method.

I'm also assumming that this is highly advanced organic tech. where the people can easily manipulate the organisms and have built them for efficiency, etc.

Even if they have, organisms do not process elemental metals very well. Moreover, they cannot co-ordinate their activities to grow things accurately.

The manufacturing accuracy of biological organisms is simply pitiful. The average human is not even close to being symmetrical, even in such gross measurements as arm and leg lengths.

--A machine shop is not sufficient to produce things like microchips or other delicate parts. Just as a machine shop would have its place in a ship so would organic "tools." FYI, I have worked in a machine shop though it was a small one used to produce laboratory equipment. However, we could only produce crude stuff without having prefabricated parts from much bigger machine shops or manufacturing plants.
-Why can't you produce metallic components with adv. org. tech. Are you limiting the discussion to modern tech.? If so why? We can't even build an interstellar ship yet. You do realize bacteria perform all sorts of exotic chemical reactions involving metals very efficiently don't you? In addition, cells have a huge number of ways to communicate and thereby coordinate themselves. I'm not sure what the best toleraces you can get are though. However, organisms can be made to comform their shape to a given space which may be useful.
-You seem to think that organisms are not capable of the necessary accuracy to produce replacement parts. However, you ignore the very complexity of humans themselves which function despite these intolerances. Besides a need for post growth processing doesn't make organic manufacturing worthless.
-BTW, cancer is not a problem for a bioship since you can just replace the part (unlike in humans). In addition, you would select for unmutated cells every time you remade your stock cells.

[Darth Wong]

--A machine shop is not sufficient to produce things like microchips or other delicate parts.

Neither is organic tech. Bio-organisms have never demonstrated the ability to make anything but themselves, and bio-organisms have specific characteristics which make them unsuitable. A microchip, for example, requires extreme manufacturing accuracy, and biological organisms have pitiful manufacturing accuracy (of themselves, never mind something they would theoretically make).

Just as a machine shop would have its place in a ship so would organic "tools." FYI, I have worked in a machine shop though it was a small one used to produce laboratory equipment. However, we could only produce crude stuff without having prefabricated parts from much bigger machine shops or manufacturing plants.

And biotech can only produce crude stuff period. The manufacturing tolerances on a typical organism are inferior to those found in children's toys.

Why can't you produce metallic components with adv. org. tech. Are you limiting the discussion to modern tech.? If so why? We can't even build an interstellar ship yet.

It's not a matter of tech so much as inherent limitations of biological organisms.

You do realize bacteria perform all sorts of exotic chemical reactions involving metals very efficiently don't you?

Only with types of metals which happen to be suitable for that purpose; it cannot be extrapolated to the manufacture of metallic components in which the type and microstructure of metal must be chosen for function, not suitability to the manufacturing process. Do not allow the tail to wag the dog.

In addition, cells have a huge number of ways to communicate and thereby coordinate themselves.

They communicate, but not in the sense that long-range dimensional alignment and group co-ordination becomes possible. People can communicate with each other, but try to get a million people to make a perfectly straight line across North America without some kind of technological device to guide them, and it won't happen. And if you have technological devices to guide them (ie- tooling), then what's the point of the biological organisms?

I'm not sure what the best toleraces you can get are though. However, organisms can be made to comform their shape to a given space which may be useful.

Liquid metal and plastic also conforms to a given space. It's called "casting and moulding", and it happens in seconds, not months.

You seem to think that organisms are not capable of the necessary accuracy to produce replacement parts. However, you ignore the very complexity of humans themselves which function despite these intolerances.

Irrelevant. You have already conceded that the manufacture of biological structures is not, in and of itself, a worthwhile goal because biological structures are hopeless unsuitable for space travel. Therefore, you are attempting to use biological organisms to manufacture machine components, microchips, and other technological devices which do NOT function despite loose tolerances. We do not wish to emulate or manufacture systems which have proven themselves wholly unsuitable for the task at hand.

Besides a need for post growth processing doesn't make organic manufacturing worthless.

Don't be ridiculous. If it makes something which has inferior manufacturing tolerances to childrens' toys, it will be scrap. No amount of post-processing will save it unless it is a crude piece (as opposed to something like a microchip), and if it's a crude piece, it would have been made much more quickly and easily in a machine shop.