19 ms·
DARPA Large Bio-Mechanical Space Structures
- jeisc 2y agoCouldn't a self replicating structure grow out of control like vines and weeds?
- ulnarkressty 2y agoSpace goats.
- h2zizzle 2y agoI am wracking my brain to come up with a "coats to coats" joke that makes sense here.
- heyitsguay 2y agoCool idea, very ambitious, is there any prior research or feasible testing setup that would support getting from 0 to 1 with this?
- gessha 2y agoI believe this is a program to prototype technology that has already been tried/theorized on Earth and needs an evaluation in Space. The program director has a background in planetary science [1] and I assume they will evaluate proposals. [1] https://www.darpa.mil/about/people/michael-nayak https://www.darpa.mil/about/people/michael-nayak
- beefnugs 2y agoYeah this seems crazy to just throw out into the public. How do they decide what and when is worth funding? Does there have to be some kind of shining light of progress... or is it just moonshot after moonshot of blind hope?
- laughingcurve 2y agoDARPA is the one agency that gets shit done and demands results. They are not working on blind hope
- asoneth 2y agoDARPA Program Managers have a lot of leeway to write these sorts of requests. PMs are typically experts in their field and often come from an academic, industry, military, or government research lab. DARPA gives them a budget for grants, autonomy, and 3-5 years to fund interesting work. Many fail, many have mixed success, and a small number revolutionize their field. (Source: worked on a few DARPA-funded projects decades ago.)
- woleium 2y agoSounds like someone bought into the Dyson tree meme revival that was floating round the internet a month so ago!
- Apofis 2y agoThat would be in interesting direction for our tech to go, everything grown organically including space structures.
- 4o20vhdl296nsb 2y agoHopefully it won't be considered "woke" to manufacture things organically as opposed to using steel and concrete and plastic.
- ge96 2y agoCylon basestar here we come
- barbazoo 2y ago> Some examples of structures that could be biologically manufactured and assembled, but that may be infeasible to produce traditionally, include tethers for a space elevator, grid-nets for orbital debris remediation, kilometer-scale interferometers for radio science, new self-assembled wings of a commercial space station for hosting additional payloads, or on-demand production of patch materials to adhere and repair micrometeorite damage.
- nullbyte 2y agoThis is how Zerg starts
- hirenj 2y agoFirst question I have is what kind of nutrient base conditions can we expect to start from? Should it be like Earth, or somewhere a bit more resource constrained (and how would it be constrained)? I’d like to imagine solar reactors mimicking primordial goo to synthesise the essentials for these materials.
- gene-h 2y agoAnything you want and can launch into space. The program goal is being able to grow large structures. The intent seems to be using biology as a means to more efficiently transform launched mass into big structures.
- cududa 2y ago"A key unknown in creating such bio-mechanical structures in space is how the structure would be assembled. Feedstock must be provided (and relocated if necessary) to the growing edge, or to the area from which biological materials are being extruded. If aerobic organisms or mechanisms are required (grown in space and then desiccated by exposure to vacuum when growth is complete), the methods and support equipment required to preserve key aerobic variables (e.g., atmosphere, pressure, temperature) must be part of the biomechanical assembly system design." Lots of nuanced details around your question in the doc! EDIT: I stupidly copy and pasted my local link to the PDF -- it appears this listing has been removed since posted. Here's another link to it https://govtribe.com/file/government-file/darpa-sn-25-51-dot-pdf https://govtribe.com/file/government-file/darpa-sn-25-51-dot... Seems they're interested in precisely the question you pose, but coming at it from a few different directions
- chr1 2y agoSomewhat similar and probably easier to achieve would be trees floating in open ocean, and some kind of plant capable to bring nutrients up from the large depth. Currently most of the ocean is a lifeless desert, with most of life concentrated in the places where upwelling occurs. This kind of floating trees would add enough biomass to compensate for all of the human produced CO2 and even more.
- soared 2y agoI don’t think trees and live on saltwater
- chr1 2y agoPlants don't live in open space either, and yet the submitted page wants to research possibilities. Using some genes from mangroves it should be possible to develop a plant that would grow in open sea.
- tlb 2y agoMangroves do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangrove https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangrove
- the_sleaze_ 2y ago> Floating trees in the open ocean. The more refined version of this are intentionally created algal blooms, ala the red tide. Then you would somehow capture the CO2 dissolved in ocean water that the algae concentrates. In this way you'd use the ocean itself as your carbon capture "filter" and "clean the filter". The issue is that since there just isn't enough nutrients for life, and adding fertilizers costs more carbon than it sequesters. The deep ocean usually gets its nitrogen from life dying above, decaying downwards then getting pushed upwards again. I don't know of any deep ocean reserves of nitrogen that just needs brought to the surface.
- chr1 2y agoNitrogen is easy, it can be captured from air, iron is the main thing missing in surface water that must be brought up by upwelling. But having real trees above the water is much more useful than simple carbon capture, they would serve as wavebreakers for seasteading settlements too.
- debacle 2y agoStep 1 would be to see if a nonporous wood holds up to the vacuum of space with enough durability. The biggest issue would be reclaiming moisture from the wood as it dried rather than losing it to space. Things like corals or molluscs would be too heavy (though that idea spawned a wonderful series of 16 bit side scrolling video games). Without some sort of easy orbital exit/entry, it's unlikely that being "in space" will be a feasible permanent option.
- ceejayoz 2y agoWe're doing step one. https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/jaxas-first-wooden-satellite-deploys-from-space-station/ https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/jaxas-first-wooden-satell...
- ckemere 2y agoWhen reading these program announcements, it's important to keep in mind that the (unofficial?) mandate for a DARPA program officer is to fund proposals that lie in the boundaries of [Doesn't at face violate laws of physics, P(Success) = 0.2]. A program where the vast majority of aims were clearly successfully delivered would be a program that should have been funded by other government agencies. Of course, with R&D currently on the chopping block, we'll see if the same people that complain about NSF/NIH start coming for DARPA also...
- laughingcurve 2y agoIf they come for DARPA then we are all in deep shit because that means things are far worse than we could have imagined.
- caycep 2y agolike even more far-worse than the current far-worse?
- SequoiaHope 2y agoIn the words of Han Solo “I don’t know I can imagine quite a bit.”
- ballooney 2y agoThings already are that bad, you’re standing an inch beyond where the previous wave washed up to and saying “well if it gets here in the next few waves then suddenly we become in deep shit’ while all around people are shouting at you about the existence of a concept called ‘the tide’. This is happening right now. fight back.
- foxglacier 2y agoCome on. Even if all of Darpa is shut down, it will hardly matter. Come back in 4 years and see that the world is still turning but you've used up your hyperbolic panic on a big nothing-burger.
- TeeMassive 2y agoSomeone at DARPA read Night's Dawn
- LargoLasskhyfv 2y agoWhat? Edenist hawks in the void?
- feverzsj 2y agoI don't want a bloody meat spaceship. They should try crystallization.
- rl3 2y agoI've got bad news for you: radiotrophic fungi is already a thing. https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/life-in-the-extreme-radiation/ https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/life-in-the-extreme-radia... https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/News-Stories/Article/3142068/nrl-fungal-experiment-launches-as-artemis-i-payload/ https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/News-Stories/Article/31420...
- fuzzythinker 2y ago404 Page Not Found
- CringingStump 2y agoProtomolecule comes to mind.
- miohtama 2y agoLet's try to find something that doesn't use humans as raw material
- kolinko 2y ago404. Mirror?
- L_226 2y agoI almost wrote a short story about colonising Mars by firing radioisotope bullets with genetically engineered fungi coatings into the surface. These would metabolise the radiation and use the minerals in the crust to grow into large habitat volumes thick enough to retain atmosphere and insulate against radiation and thermal losses. Maybe it can be real one day!
- Havoc 2y agoThis is how the Zerg from starcraft get created :p
- ryandamm 2y agoI saw this at a DSO* presentation ("Darpa's Darpa") back in ~2018. Hope they've gotten some early traction, that was some of the least wild crap that was being presented. My company was pitching holographic cameras, and we weren't scifi enough. The investigator wanted to know if we could do hyperspectral 3D imaging from something the size of a sugar cube. ("Uh, no?" was our response.) * Defense Sciences Organization: https://www.darpa.mil/about/offices/dso https://www.darpa.mil/about/offices/dso
- MrLeap 2y ago> Seeing (sensing) the unseen I'm reading this as a soft signal that there's still a market for marinating wizards in salty brine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project_(U.S._Army_unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project_(U.S._Army_un...
- titanomachy 2y agoCan you explain what specific experiment your excellent imagery refers to?
- MrLeap 2y agoWhichever one used sensory deprivation tanks. I don't remember the specifics. High salinity solutions make wizards more buoyant. It's immediately self evident to me how this helps one telepathically view the inside of missile silos on the other side of the planet.
- binary132 2y agoIt doesn’t sound so crazy to grow fibrous vines and wood in a habitat, dry them and reclaim the water, and then use them in construction. Growing them in place in space sounds a little crazy.
- 29athrowaway 2y agoThat is how you end up with gray goo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo
- nonelog 2y ago> [...] biological self-assembly properties of tunable materials (e.g. hydrogels [...] FYI, hydrogels were part of the "recent vaccine" components.
- ButOneDuck 2y agoLooking at the comments, most people are approaching this as 'grow, like trees'. We're literally talking moonshot projects here and nowhere does the brief mention specifically trees, or aerobic respiration/processes, there is plenty of room for using Chitin, Spider silk, keratin or a combination of biopolymers to form resilient composite structures. There's already been videos of people using these as doping agents or additives for bulletproof armor, to middling success. The synthesis via yeast or e.coli for most of these are partially solved problems, its more texturing them or using bio-mechanical processing to form thread or ply or load bearing panels that seems to be the major hurdle. Also, being able to reliably source component and materials from near vacuum or whatever asteroid that happens to wander by that makes this a much more difficult problem to even define.
- MrLeap 2y agoYou gotta forgive people. We've all been a little eroded by regular assertions that a safe underhand throws, like turning a webpage into an electron app or whatever, are moonshots. I for one love things like this. I wish we used a little more of our colossal production power to try manifesting the wilder things from our imagination. Maybe they can contract out how to make society have a better handle on balancing compassion for self and others. Or we could be realistic and get back to making a philosopher stone. ;) Hope I live long enough to go on a modestly priced moon vacation up the H.R. Geiger space tentacle
- atonse 2y agoExactly, I am totally fine with us spending some tax dollars to try out these absolutely insane ideas. But this isn't a matter of "let's spend more" because the pool of people that can see an absolutely insane idea, and ones that can actually work on them, are the vanishingly small number of nearly eccentrics. So there is an upper limit on how much money can be spent if you're at the absolute tip of the iceberg.
- MrLeap 2y ago> because the pool of people that can see an absolutely insane idea, and ones that can actually work on them, are the vanishingly small number of nearly eccentrics. I go back and forth with this. The further along the path I go, the more I weight good faith and sincere will to make a thing over ability-at-start. (drive + moxy + curious + perceptive - ego) is a better function to optimize for than buzzword count on a resume. I think there's a lot of people who can do crazy things in a good faith kind of way that advances the wave front of humanity. It's possible that it's everyone, and it's all about conditions. "all about conditions" is doing some heavy lifting, but maybe you see what I'm trying to articulate.
- jvoorhis 2y agocomplementary
- trhway 2y agothe threshold to beat i think would be simple robots-3d-printers which could potentially 3d print any material using say laser or electron beam into pretty much anything of any size in space.
- rjinman 2y agoWhat the frell! This is cool.