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DARPA Wants 'Large Bio-Mechanical Space Structures'
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Biological Technologies Office (BTO) wants to know how to build what it is calling 'Large Bio-Mechanical Space Structures.'
Rapid, controlled,
directional growth to create very large (500+ meter length) useful space structures would disrupt
the current state-of-the-art and position biology as a complimentary component of the in-space
assembly infrastructure.
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 selfassembled wings of a commercial space station for hosting additional payloads.
Fortunately for DARPA, I understand exactly what they want, thanks to a series of novels by science fiction writer Greg Bear.
In a new series of novels debuting in 2014, Bear describes what DARPA's Biological Technologies Office wants; he calls them vehicle seeds. It does't make sense to carry all of the materials for vehicles and weapons all the way to Titan, when you can find all the materials you could ever want right there, quick to hand.
Given recent advances in metabolic engineering for rapid growth, extremophiles with novel
properties, biological self-assembly properties of tunable materials, and emergent mechanical
design principles of biological systems, DARPA is interested in exploring the feasibility of
“growing” biological structures of unprecedented size in microgravity.
('Killing Titan' by Greg Bear)
These organic compounds will provide plenty of the raw materials used by our weapon and vehicle seeds to double and even triple their present mass..."These are your rudimentary seed packages," Bueller says. "Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures, like excavators or centipedes. Others will take more time and grow out to full size by themselves, mostly the vehicles supporting big weapons - zap guns, ionics, penetrators. Once placed in their cradles beside the station, all the seeds will dip from the station storage tanks, and they'll also start pulling in gases and liquids from the local atmosphere...
...visuals of seeds sprouting, growing like carnival balloons plumping out, becoming monstrous, making crew and warrior spaces...
(Read more about vehicle seeds)
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/1/2025)
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