DARPA exploring growing bio structures of "unprecedented size" in microgravity
87 comments
·March 4, 2025transistor-man
I'm here to welcome the era of bamboo based spaceships
ceejayoz
There's a little one in orbit right now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LignoSat
(although that's magnolia wood, not bamboo)
itishappy
I 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.
jajko
I loved how diverse those back stories of each characters were. A bit of cyberpunk, a bit of politics, interesting concept of time reversal.
Henchman21
I immediately thought of the Templar’s tree ships. Clearly time for a re-read!
null
JumpCrisscross
Whoever is doing DARPA’s PR and, apparently GR, since I guess federal agencies have to do that now, deserves a raise.
jordanb
EP: Elon Pandering, an essential function for any agency these days.
nulld3v
LOL as much as I disagree with Elon's current stint in government, this is probably among the most tame projects in DARPA's portfolio.
sandworm101
Most tame and most not-classified.
initramfs
tame as seaweed wrapped around your ankles in shallow water, i might say.
arolihas
doesn't sound very efficient to me
lovich
what is GR?
azemetre
Guessing government relations, similar to PR being public relations.
JumpCrisscross
Yup. Lobbyists are outside your org. GR coördinates their messaging.
PaulHoule
This is a theme in "The Web Between the Worlds" [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Web_Between_the_Worlds
card_zero
Wow, 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
The 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
I initially downvoted this because it sounded ludicrous and couldn't be true, but indeed, 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
If 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.
glenstein
When you say "exceptions" I can't tell if you mean to be hinting toward something like new-agey crystals, or something more like DARPA bio structures, or something else entirely. What is the frontier of unexplored knowledge that is forbidden by academia?
dekhn
I can't remember the source (xkcd?) that drew any individual scientist's contribution as a tiny little bump on the edge of a huge circle.
It's not talked about it much outside of research groups, but for any field, there is a small number of people who are currently pushing the boundaries, and they all read each other's papers and have a good idea of what the next question to ask is. It can often be a race to engineer an experiment that convinces the reviewers that your article should be published first. It's a sort of cooperation/competition that moves the field forward faster. These areas often move so fast that nobody even bothers to write down the current problems, it's just sort of talked about in person.
Put another way, the successful discoverers are the ones looking for their keys at the end of the streetlight: "Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that's where the light is. It has no other choice." (Chomsky). Few if anybody looking where there is no light discovers anything (even if it's sitting there in the dark), or at least, nobody believes them unless they provide significant evidence (like building a new lamp)
moelf
this. Even something as singular as the prediction of the Higgs boson was ~simultaneously reached by different groups(!) of people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_PRL_symmetry_breaking_pap...
pegasus
Calculus I can understand, but the kind of coincidence GP describes is much harder to explain.
itishappy
"A clear case of plagiarism? No — merely an idea whose time has come." - Clarke
whyenot
This reminds me of Larry Niven's Integral Trees. Very cool!
Falimonda
Can we / will be ever be able to grow bioengineered coral at an accelerated rate with a desired growth structure/direction in space?
daveguy
Accelerated 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.
neom
From last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43185769
kazinator
We 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
Yeah, but getting these structures into space is 99% of the challenge. Best to build them there to begin with.
yummypaint
Wonder 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
What 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
Might 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_nit...
tonetegeatinst
Feedsto ck is the moon...its literally resources we don't have to transport into space if we use the moon.
inetknght
That's not quite how gravity wells work.
xvilka
Reminded me of coral based living spaceships of The Night's Dawn trilogy by Peter Hamilton.
Hilariously 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?