5 ms·

Maybe the future of space travel are living spaceships. Some kind of crustaceans with outer shell, living main body, and human crew inside. Something between fu

by xvilka 5y ago

Maybe the future of space travel are living spaceships. Some kind of crustaceans with outer shell, living main body, and human crew inside. Something between fungi, animal, and plant even.

f6v 5y ago
That’s straight out of Farscape, iirc. I remember watching a living ship fly though space as a kid and it seemed like a giant stretch. But maybe it isn’t.
- T-A 5y ago
  Good old Moya: https://farscape.fandom.com/wiki/Moya https://farscape.fandom.com/wiki/Moya
FredPret 5y ago
> crustacean We’ll call it the lob-star
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Why not Zoidberg, tbh?
- justinator 5y ago
  I call it: delicious!
jorvi 5y ago
> Something between fungi, animal, and plant even. You mean a protista?
vbezhenar 5y ago
IMO future of everything is replicating nano-robots, artificial life-like beings. Nature can't be as good as artificially created specialized mechanisms. Right now nature have an advantage in self-replicating cells which we can't reproduce yet, but I'm sure that we will.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  Maybe over 2 billion years nature has created as efficient as we can get, and it would be best to have hybrid life that is a mix of nano-tech and biological cells. Is it a given that we could create tiny factories more efficiently than cells?
  - IX-103 5y ago
    Nature tends to get stuck in local optimums where things are "good enough". For reference see the recurrent laryngeal nerve, the "backwards" eye in many animals (though not octopuses or their relatives). We can do better than nature just by taking the best from everything, integrating it together, and removing all the extra junk. Imagine if we just used it as inspiration. I'm not saying tiny factories wouldn't end up looking like cells, but I expect the similarities to be superficial, as we have access to more robust materials to serve as feedstock and can have better control of the operating environment.
edgyquant 5y ago
Maybe these competing for resources around stars is the future of life
walleeee 5y ago
cool, like the yuuzhan vong in a sense a planet is one of these already, just a little less maneuverable than we would maybe prefer out of a ship, and inverts the hard shell soft interior crustacean-ship idea for large ships maybe you could literally use a planet, e.g. swing a spare one out of the solar system in the direction you want to go... if rogue planets can hold down an atmosphere and stay geologically active [0] maybe you could have liquid water oceans and sea life and atlantean cities scattered around the seafloor drawing hydrothermal power plus you're hidden pretty well flying dark in interstellar space, maybe civilizations deem it prudent to leave their parent stars for dark forest concerns etc, maybe you could even harness earthquakes/vulcanism to (very slowly) manipulate the angular velocity vector enough to course-correct and navigate [0]: https://doi.org/10.1038%2F21811 https://doi.org/10.1038%2F21811

by xvilka 5y ago

Maybe the future of space travel are living spaceships. Some kind of crustaceans with outer shell, living main body, and human crew inside. Something between fungi, animal, and plant even.

f6v 5y ago

That’s straight out of Farscape, iirc. I remember watching a living ship fly though space as a kid and it seemed like a giant stretch. But maybe it isn’t.

T-A 5y ago
Good old Moya: https://farscape.fandom.com/wiki/Moya https://farscape.fandom.com/wiki/Moya

FredPret 5y ago

> crustacean We’ll call it the lob-star

arcticbull 5y ago
Why not Zoidberg, tbh?
justinator 5y ago
I call it: delicious!

jorvi 5y ago

> Something between fungi, animal, and plant even. You mean a protista?

vbezhenar 5y ago

IMO future of everything is replicating nano-robots, artificial life-like beings. Nature can't be as good as artificially created specialized mechanisms. Right now nature have an advantage in self-replicating cells which we can't reproduce yet, but I'm sure that we will.

edgyquant 5y ago
Maybe over 2 billion years nature has created as efficient as we can get, and it would be best to have hybrid life that is a mix of nano-tech and biological cells. Is it a given that we could create tiny factories more efficiently than cells?
- IX-103 5y ago
  Nature tends to get stuck in local optimums where things are "good enough". For reference see the recurrent laryngeal nerve, the "backwards" eye in many animals (though not octopuses or their relatives). We can do better than nature just by taking the best from everything, integrating it together, and removing all the extra junk. Imagine if we just used it as inspiration. I'm not saying tiny factories wouldn't end up looking like cells, but I expect the similarities to be superficial, as we have access to more robust materials to serve as feedstock and can have better control of the operating environment.

edgyquant 5y ago

Maybe these competing for resources around stars is the future of life

walleeee 5y ago

cool, like the yuuzhan vong in a sense a planet is one of these already, just a little less maneuverable than we would maybe prefer out of a ship, and inverts the hard shell soft interior crustacean-ship idea for large ships maybe you could literally use a planet, e.g. swing a spare one out of the solar system in the direction you want to go... if rogue planets can hold down an atmosphere and stay geologically active [0] maybe you could have liquid water oceans and sea life and atlantean cities scattered around the seafloor drawing hydrothermal power plus you're hidden pretty well flying dark in interstellar space, maybe civilizations deem it prudent to leave their parent stars for dark forest concerns etc, maybe you could even harness earthquakes/vulcanism to (very slowly) manipulate the angular velocity vector enough to course-correct and navigate [0]: https://doi.org/10.1038%2F21811 https://doi.org/10.1038%2F21811