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DARPA exploring growing bio structures of "unprecedented size" in microgravity
- transistor-man 2y agoI'm here to welcome the era of bamboo based spaceships
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 2y agoThere's a little one in orbit right now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LignoSat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LignoSat (although that's magnolia wood, not bamboo)
- edaemon 2y agoWoah, a wooden satellite, that's awesome! Somehow that feels more like a uniquely Earthly thing out there in space.
- prennert 2y agoIts also uniquely Japanese. From the wikipedia article: > The satellite was assembled through a traditional Japanese crafts technique without screws or glue.
- itishappy 2y agoI for one am prepared for our evolution into the Ousters. If you haven't read the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons, go read it. It's worth it. https://hyperioncantos.fandom.com/wiki/Ousters https://hyperioncantos.fandom.com/wiki/Ousters
- Henchman21 2y agoI immediately thought of the Templar’s tree ships. Clearly time for a re-read!
- jajko 2y agoI loved how diverse those back stories of each characters were. A bit of cyberpunk, a bit of politics, interesting concept of time reversal.
- mouse_ 2y agoprevious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43185769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43185769
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoWhoever is doing DARPA’s PR and, apparently GR, since I guess federal agencies have to do that now, deserves a raise.
- arolihas 2y agodoesn't sound very efficient to me
- lovich 2y agowhat is GR?
- azemetre 2y agoGuessing government relations, similar to PR being public relations.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoYup. Lobbyists are outside your org. GR coördinates their messaging.
- lovich 2y agoUnrelated, but I appreciate the proper usage of the English umlaut
- jihadjihad 2y agoThe formal name for it is diaeresis [0]. The New Yorker is famous for being a high-profile publication that enforces its usage. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)
- marxisttemp 2y agoNotationally I wish the diaeresis was a single dot. It bugs me that we’re using two dots to separate two syllables, yet both dots are over the second syllable. Plus a single dot would avoid ambiguity with the umlaut (though I suppose there are very few words with both features).
- PaulHoule 2y agoThis is a theme in "The Web Between the Worlds" [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Web_Between_the_Worlds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Web_Between_the_Worlds
- card_zero 2y agoWow, there's some serious zeitgeist going on there: This novel was published almost simultaneously with The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke. Through an amazing coincidence the two novels contained many similarities. Both protagonists are engineers who have built the world's longest bridge using a machine named the "Spider", both of whom are hired to build a space elevator, and both engineers modify their Spiders to produce a crystalline fiber. It's like the simultaneous invention of calculus. People are conduits for independently-living ideas.
- Telemakhos 2y agoThe idea of spider webs in space was explored long before, in the second century AD, by Lucian of Samosata in his _Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα_ or "True Stories." Spiders run webs from the sun (land of the Heliots) and the moon (the Selenites) so that a vast space battle can be waged on a plain between them.
- dekhn 2y agoI initially downvoted this because it sounded ludicrous and couldn't be true, but indeed, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_True_Story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_True_Story Always fun to see stuff written almost 2 thousand years ago about life on other planets.
- fooker 2y agoIf you have spent time in academia, this concept is ever present. Somehow all the academics in a particular field all over the world just happen to agree on a narrow set of ideas to explore next. Most of science happens like this, yes even the Newtons and Einsteins of the world explored ideas in this narrow frontier of next ideas. There used to be exceptions in the distant past but modern science does not tolerate exceptions.
- dimator 2y ago[flagged]
- 9283409232 2y agoAny department that is responsible for paying Elon Musk has a better chance than others that stand in his way. USAID was investigating musk and CFPB were in the way of his X Pay nonsense. He gets a lot of money from the DoD so if anything they will have their budget increased.
- xeonmc 2y agoBetween this and the drone-swarm command experiment from yesterday, seems like whoever is heading DARPA mains Zerg in StarCraft.
- 7thaccount 2y agoMight also have something to do with the war in Ukraine completely changing our understanding of modern warfare. Defense projects take decades to design and build and now out doctrine is somewhat impacted by how effective drones are proving to be.
- inetknght 2y ago> the war in Ukraine completely changing our understanding of modern warfare Am I crazy to think that the war in Ukraine hasn't changed my understanding of modern warfare? Maybe I'm in the wrong business.
- dmos62 2y agoDo you discount the impact of drones, or did you put a lot of value in them before the war and still do? I find the tactics around using expendable troops to attrit expensive troops a bit humbling too.
- Out_of_Characte 2y agoDrones have always been in extensive use during warfare. Though in the past it was only very high altitude gliders of the american military whereas today there are countless low-altitude consumer grade drones.
- 7thaccount 2y agoI think this is a little pedantic or maybe I'm just being too ambiguous lol. I'll try to make my thoughts more clear as it's likely the latter. You're absolutely right that drones have been used for awhile, but that has mainly been for reconnaissance and some extremely expensive predator drones. The idea of having thousands of small consumer grade drones mass produced cheaply to terrorize a much larger army by dropping grenades on soldiers and live streaming it on the internet is definitely a new development. There are drone swarms covering our major military ships as well and it's unknown whether it's our own military doing it as part of a black ops program (I assume it's possible, but highly unlikely) or a hostile foreign power doing recon. Russian tanks are also getting dissected by RPGs at an unexpected rate. The Ukrainians took out major Russian warships by distracting the ship with drones and then ramming it with a jet ski torpedo. Modern militaries are scrambling to find new technology and strategies for how to handle these new capabilities.
- kazinator 2y agoWe kind of have microgravity on Earth under water, which provides apparent reduced weight due to buoyancy. Coral reefs and all that. Underground root/rhizome structures are also bio structures existing in a kind of microgravity since they are firmly supported by the surrounding soil they are packed into.
- paxys 2y agoYeah, but getting these structures into space is 99% of the challenge. Best to build them there to begin with.
- Falimonda 2y agoCan we / will be ever be able to grow bioengineered coral at an accelerated rate with a desired growth structure/direction in space?
- daveguy 2y agoAccelerated rate with equivalent integrity probably requires some engineering tricks nature hasn't "figured out" yet. Given nature has had a few billion years of massively parallel processing of the original genetic algorithm, it's unlikely. Especially considering ASI is a pipe dream. Also, sea creatures use buoyancy to their advantage. Maybe we will find other structure development systems from combining existing pieces of biologic systems. But that's also unlikely, because biologic systems are so incredibly entangled (to use a software concurrency/complexity term). That said, it is an awesome research direction, just for the novel construction techniques potential.
- Havoc 2y agoHilariously obvious that someone's pet project got tacked on there at the end. Kilometer wide structures please - or alternatively can you make us a tube of bio glue to fix punctures?
- pinoy420 2y ago[dead]
- genman 2y agoWhat would be feed stock for this?
- JoelMcCracken 2y agoEither human blood or potatoes, the two options.
- smfjaw 2y agothe flood!
- krashidov 2y agoserious question - how do you water it?
- tz18 2y agoThis is the sort of shit that gets you glassed by the watchers
- eGQjxkKF6fif 2y agoWould hemp be viable in this case?
- beanjuice 2y agoWhat will make the hemp?
- yummypaint 2y agoWonder if anyone is looking into splicing those spider silk genes into a fungus. Maybe the mycelium could gain enough tensile strength to hold pressure? Maybe exude the proteins and form strong tubes around itself? Fungal structures are already surprisingly light for how strong they are.
- beanjuice 2y agoWhat I don't understand about the proposal is that every c-c bond the fungus could make still has to be shipped from earth.
- xolox 2y agoMight it not be possible to "harvest" carbon from sources on e.g. the moon [1], thereby requiring less effort to launch those resources into orbit? Feel free to point out if I'm talking (thinking) nonsense here... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_resources#Carbon_and_nitrogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_resources#Carbon_and_nit...
- tonetegeatinst 2y agoFeedsto ck is the moon...its literally resources we don't have to transport into space if we use the moon.
- inetknght 2y agoThat's not quite how gravity wells work.
- whyenot 2y agoThis reminds me of Larry Niven's Integral Trees. Very cool! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Integral_Trees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Integral_Trees
- xvilka 2y agoReminded me of coral based living spaceships of The Night's Dawn trilogy by Peter Hamilton.
- neom 2y agoFrom last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43185769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43185769
- alexfromapex 2y agoIf it's complimentary, doesn't that mean it's free? Why do they need a contract then?