[Woolie Wool]

A sponge doesn't have to hold an internal pressure of 1 bar, no matter what.

Also, organisms at the bottom of the Marianas trench don't get subjected to absolute zero temperatures on one side and temperatures measured in hundreds of degrees on the other (a tube worm enjoys warm temperatures 24 hours a day in every direction because water conducts heat and vacuum does not), constant radiation bombardment, near-total vacuum, and huge warships shooting photon beam cannons at them.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by Woolie Wool
A sponge doesn't have to hold an internal pressure of 1 bar, no matter what.

Humans hold an internal pressure of 1 bar because they naturally live at an external pressure of 1 bar.  Sponges hold an internal pressure of many bars because they naturally live at an external pressure of many bars.

You only need an enclosure if the pressure is unequal.  Humans don't have steel skin because their internal and external pressures are equal.   Same with sponges.  If you brought an unprotected human to the bottom of the ocean he'd be crushed, and if you brought an unprotected trench sponge to the surface he'd explode.  This is basic biology, Woolie.

As for a space-borne organism, it could cope with the heat if it did a perpetual "barbecue roll" like the Apollo spacecraft.  It could cope with the vacuum if it had an internal vacuum (or close to it); or it could be a ball of gas, like the Starborn.  As for radiation, what may be harmful for humans may not be for this alien - it could eat the radiation, for example.

[Woolie Wool]

A "living ship" couldn't cope with the vacuum because without some kind of atmosphere, it will not be able to metabolize fuel efficiently.

And how, pray tell, does a gaseous organism even live?

Also, radiation is bad for any living creature, period. Organic molecules required for life are delicate and complex, and radiation destroys them. The idea of "eating radiation" is absurd.

And that still doesn't change the fact that no "bio-armor" in existence even approaches the strength of tank armor, never mind whatever FS hulls are made of. A stick of dynamite will shatter bone, enamel, and shells, but a tank wouldn't even notice it.

[Flipside]

About the Gravity Mod - Well, we aren't asking for things like Wing area to be taken into account or anything like that, else if you were in a Herc, TI would become a driving game. I guess what is needed is a 'Gravity' setting and a 'Bouyancy' setting, so rather than relying on the ships 'Mass', a bomber will simply have a lower 'bouyancy'.

The equation would be roughly :-

(Gm^2/100) * B

So B would run from 0 to 100, 100 meaning it is fully effected by the downward pull of Gravity and has to fight to stay above the ground. 0 hovers at no thrust.

Upward lift is Trig between the X angle and Z velocity, though I can't remember the details atm

Edit : Oh, and plants have been eating radiation since before we were wondering whether the land was worth a go.

[phatosealpha]

Not only can life survive in space, we've seen it happen.  Even with life not specifically evolved for it.

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/Surveyor3.html


An unmanned lunar probe which soft-landed on the Moon near Oceanus Procellarum on April 20, 1967. Two and a half years later, on November 20, 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean recovered the camera from Surveyor 3 and brought it back to Earth. When NASA scientists examined the camera they found that the polyurethane foam insulation covering its circuit boards contained 50 to 100 viable specimens of Streptococcus mitis, a harmless bacterium commonly found in the human nose, mouth, and throat. Since the camera had been returned under strict sterile conditions, it is evident that the microbes must have been on the probe since it departed the Earth and had survived 31 months in the absence of air or water while being subjected to huge monthly temperature variations and bombardment by hard ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Conrad later commented: "I always thought the most significant thing that we ever found on the whole ... Moon was that little bacteria who came back and living and nobody ever said [anything] about it." This is one of a number of remarkable examples of the extreme survivability of bacteria and bacterial spores. See also back contamination, forward contamination, and panspermia.



Common nose and throat bacteria survived for nearly 3 years in hard vacuum, hard radiation, and those wild temperature fluctuations.  And these aren't magical space bacteria, these are normal everyday suckers happiest living in your throat, where there are probably a few thousand now.



Life finds a way.

[Woolie Wool]

Uh, you do realize that bacteria in unfavorable conditions encase themselves in spores and go into a sort of suspended animation, right? They don't move, eat, or reproduce. Their metabolic functions shut down. They just sit there until the harsh conditions of space finally destroy them.

So bacteria encased in spores in a state of cryptobiosis can survive. What about an Orion-sized "living ship" that is a complex multicellular organism with ion engines and beam cannons attached? Bacteria in cryptobiosis are much different than the growing, living, complex ships you see in shows and books like Babylon 5.

And the fact still remains that these bioships could probably be pierced by assault rifles, never mind beam cannons.

[phatosealpha]

The point was that the conditions you label as unsurvivable are in fact survivable by lifeforms behaving in an appropriate manner.  Super simple bacteria have a hibernation state, yes - and that behavior allows them to survive a space voyage.  If you've got super simple bacteria who can go to outer space and come back still alive, isn't it just a little shortsighted and unimaginative to imagine that no form of life could possibly survive in space?

Short version:  What's to stop them from doing with organic technology what we do with aluminum and steel?  Tremendous amounts of human technology are based in natural evolution.  

The zerg in starcraft, for instance, used exactly the same mineral resources humans used for hulls to harden their exoskeletons.  Modern day whales have thick layers of blubber to protect them from environmental threats.

The factors your listing here are all things which solutions exist to - or we would never have been able to go into space ourselves, and I'm not following your reasoning for why organic life is completely incapable of incorporating those solutions into themselves.

[Flipside]

Thing is, theres also the fact that, for example, Spiders Web is stronger than steel cabling and the Carapace on a Beetle is also incredibly tough, once again, if it were the thickness of armour plating, it would be as strong.

[Woolie Wool]

The point was that the conditions you label as unsurvivable are in fact survivable by lifeforms behaving in an appropriate manner. Super simple bacteria have a hibernation state, yes - and that behavior allows them to survive a space voyage. If you've got super simple bacteria who can go to outer space and come back still alive, isn't it just a little shortsighted and unimaginative to imagine that no form of life could possibly survive in space?

Organic ships don't just survive in sci-fi. They fly at extreme speeds, fire at other ships, take megaton-level (or worse) hits without serious damage, survive collisions with micrometeorites and debris, and repair themselves on the fly, even in the heat of combat. An organism simply can't do any of those things. Spore-encased bacteria existing for a few months is one thing, a bioship is quite another.

Thing is, theres also the fact that, for example, Spiders Web is stronger than steel cabling and the Carapace on a Beetle is also incredibly tough, once again, if it were the thickness of armour plating, it would be as strong.

First of all, spider silk can only be made in extremely small quantities and certain artificial fibers (especially sci-fi carbon nanotubules and the like) are stronger than spider silk. Furthermore, while spider silk has excellent tensile strength, its compression and shear strength (which are more important in armor) are not so impressive, and fiber provides extremely poor protection without solid plating beneath it (hence the trauma plates in body armor). Also, why bother doing all kinds of complex gene **** to make a giant carapace when you can just dig a bunch of ores and minerals out of a planet or asteroid and make plates of metallic/ceramic armor? Besides, a beetle's anatomy has extremely low internal structural strength, and such strength is an absolute must for vessels as large and fast as FS ships. Those beetles would probably be a lot tougher if they didn't have any squishy organs and soft tissues inside.

[phatosealpha]

Organic ships don't just survive in sci-fi. They fly at extreme speeds, fire at other ships, take megaton-level (or worse) hits without serious damage, survive collisions with micrometeorites and debris, and repair themselves on the fly, even in the heat of combat. An organism simply can't do any of those things. Spore-encased bacteria existing for a few months is one thing, a bioship is quite another.

And why can't it, exactly?  Exactly which part of that life are you 100% certain and have uncontrivertable proof could never be done, even by ancient space gods?

[Flipside]

Maybe because that's the way life evolved in that case

As for beetles, well, spaceships tend to have squishy humans inside too

Spidersilk is merely an example, it's designed to do a specific job, which is not to hold armour plating together, however, it's only a question of how it is laminated and hardened that determines the directional strength and shear capabilities. Spidersilk would be no good, but something like Spidersilk would be.

It's easy to think that Aliens would think like Humans and assume that building ships is far far easier than growing them, but that's only because we only know how to build ships, not how to grow them. Other life forms may have far more knowledge of Biology than us, possibly at the expense of manufacturing knowledge, maybe for them it is easier to grow them, and they can't figure how anything constructed could survive in space.

All I'll say is that, just because we don't know how it's done does not always mean that it is not do-able.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by Woolie Wool
A "living ship" couldn't cope with the vacuum because without some kind of atmosphere, it will not be able to metabolize fuel efficiently.

It doesn't have to be efficient.  More likely it would have an extremely slow metabolism and a lifespan of hundreds of thousands of years.

Also, radiation is bad for any living creature, period. Organic molecules required for life are delicate and complex, and radiation destroys them. The idea of "eating radiation" is absurd.

Suppose it's a gas-based creature.  It wouldn't contain "organic" molecules as we know them, and it wouldn't be very intelligent, so it could stand up to any radiation the cosmos could throw at it.  About the only thing that would kill it would be to spread it out thinly enough that its constituent particles couldn't interact.

You're constraining your thinking too much.  If life existed in the vacuum of space, it would probably be very different from life as we know it.

[Woolie Wool]

Biological structures are not as strong as aritficial armor. Name an organism that can shrug off a 25mm cannon hit like an Abrams tank could. A living ship would have to have a circulatory system, which itself would be extremely delicate (a cell must be in close proximity to sources of metabolic fuel or it will die). Besides, a bioship would take longer to grow and would almost certainly consume far more resources than a conventional design. The monstrous honey mushroom, which covers several square kilometers, takes millennia to grow to full size. Bioships must build cell by cell, fueling growth with (highly) inefficient processing of nutrients. Modern materials science allow us to create gigantic metal castings and stampings in seconds.

You're constraining your thinking too much. If life existed in the vacuum of space, it would probably be very different from life as we know it.

But the problem is your average sci-fi chic bioship is a ****ing animal with engines and lasers attached to it!

As for beetles, well, spaceships tend to have squishy humans inside too

The squishy humans don't have to bear the stresses imparted on a ship in flight. With inertial dampers, you could be on a ship accelerating at thousands of Gs, and your coffee wouldn't even be disturbed. However, the spaceframe would have to bear those loads and stresses because it is integral to the ship's structure. Besides, I don't see why a capital ship couldn't be programmed to return to home base through some kind of autopilot, even if its entire crew is dead.

[Goober5000]

1) Biological structures are proportionately stronger than artificial armor.  If you made a thread of spider silk and a thread of steel the same size, the silk would be stronger.  If you made a tank as small as a beetle, the beetle would be stronger.

2) Structures grow more fragile the larger they are.  This is because volume increases faster than surface area.

3) Large organisms consume proportionately fewer nutrients than smaller organisms.  A hummingbird eats three times its weight in food each day; an elephant eats much less.

This is not about sci-fi, and I never claimed that it was.  This is about sci... what science tells us an organism would be like.

[Woolie Wool]

Originally posted by Goober5000
1) Biological structures are proportionately stronger than artificial armor.  If you made a thread of spider silk and a thread of steel the same size, the silk would be stronger.  If you made a tank as small as a beetle, the beetle would be stronger.

2) Structures grow more fragile the larger they are.  This is because volume increases faster than surface area.

3) Large organisms consume proportionately fewer nutrients than smaller organisms.  A hummingbird eats three times its weight in food each day; an elephant eats much less.

This is not about sci-fi, and I never claimed that it was.  This is about sci... what science tells us an organism would be like.

This discussion originated about bioships. Bacteria are not bioships.

[Lynx]

For the first and perhaps only time in my life, I agree with Woolie Wool.
Bioships are a fecking stupid idea.

[Goober5000]

I'm not talking about bacteria or bioships, I'm talking about the physical laws that space-borne organisms must obey.  Which you seem to blithely ignore.

I'm closing this before it becomes a flame war, because it's gone far abroad from its original topic.  Go read up on your science.