How to evolve a organic ship / Thruster.

[SpaceMouse]

Hello all. Ever since I was a kid (pretty much star trek) I've been fascinated by the concept of some kind of creature evolving to live in space as my own little personal thought experiment.. As it actually turns out, It's not quite as complex as originally intended. There's one big detail I can't think out though. I don't think it would be terribly hard to collect 'nutrients' and other things possibly needed from a gas giant. How could you grow a main thruster? Most of the realistic concepts we have for something efficient enough require ultra high temperature materials that probably couldn't exist in nature.
Admittedly this is probably still pretty far in the realm of Sci-Fi but it's fun to think about in a realistic sense.
Ideas?

I've kinda started my own really unofficial little Star Trek project so it might exist in 3D at some distant point.

Edited October 21, 2017 by SpaceMouse

[kerbiloid]

Bombardier beetle has a natural chemical reactor+nozzle, throwing out 100°C hot liquid.

[Mighty1]

Solar sail?

 

[Green Baron]

You'd need some form of co-evolution, like a space creature evolving together with space onions to feed from and using the "outputs" of the digestive process as a propellant. Maybe much of the methane is produced like this ? /fun

 

Yes, this is pretty far in the realm of (sci)fi, which you'll realize when you look at how biological evolution works and what it needs.

:-)

Edited October 21, 2017 by Green Baron

[YNM]

An organism living in hard, massive, vacuum space ?

1. They'll have to live slowly.

2. Active movement are futile.

3. Well...

it's impractical.

 

The only one that somehow fulfills the criteria are actually the stars themselves. There'a a good reason why stellar evolution are described like they're a living creature !

[kerbiloid]

What we need here - is some measure of a (stability * complexity * population density).

The purpose of the life is information "recycling".
The more complex is organism - the more info it "recycles" per time.
The more stable is organism - the longer it does this, so also the more info it "recycles" per life.
The more numerous is the organism per space - the more info it "recycles" per time, just as zillions of low-end processors.
The faster runs a signal throw the organism body / between neighbour organisms, the more info their population "recycles".

Afaik, we can't see more or less complicated stable self-reproducing structures neither on atomic level, nor in space.
Distance between the stars compared to their typical lifetimes and to lifetimes of their configurations in space also makes their communication abilities very poor.

So, we can presume, that somewhere between atoms, stones, bacteria from one side and astronomic objects from another side, we have some peak.
And looks like humans are somewhere near that peak.
Especially humans augmented with cybernetics A(semi-)I.
_{Especially running kOS.}

Edited October 21, 2017 by kerbiloid

[SpaceMouse]

9 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Bombardier beetle has a natural chemical reactor+nozzle, throwing out 100°C hot liquid.

I knew there were some similar systems in nature but I didn't know of this particular one.

7 hours ago, Mighty1 said:

Solar sail?

 

Well, how did I not think of that?

[wumpus]

I'd expect something more like a tardigrade would be your typical "interstellar life form".  Note that tardigrades wouldn't be considered "living" between stars, just dried out and dormant [you might need a "super tardigrade" for such journeys], this means absolutely no form of navigation.  Somehow I'd expect the universe to end before these tardigrades actually hit anything.

My understanding of the origin of life on Earth shows no "band" of time between the possibility of life living on Earth and the oldest fossils (presumably with only indirect evidence, since they would be dealing with single celled organisms).  First this shows that Earth wasn't seeded by anything as advanced as a tardigrade (it would have started with complex multicellular life if it had).  It may well have been seeded by RNA-like matter, but if so we should expect at least fossil remains on other planets/moons in the Solar system.

[SpaceMouse]

5 hours ago, Green Baron said:

You'd need some form of co-evolution, like a space creature evolving together with space onions to feed from and using the "outputs" of the digestive process as a propellant. Maybe much of the methane is produced like this ? /fun

 

Yes, this is pretty far in the realm of (sci)fi, which you'll realize when you look at how biological evolution works and what it needs.

:-)

Yeah, I thought some form of symbiotic relationship might be required.

3 hours ago, YNM said:

An organism living in hard, massive, vacuum space ?

1. They'll have to live slowly.

2. Active movement are futile.

3. Well...

it's impractical.

 

The only one that somehow fulfills the criteria are actually the stars themselves. There'a a good reason why stellar evolution are described like they're a living creature !

I assumed they would need some way to hibernate. This is already common in nature and I don't think it would be a huge stretch for it to evolve to a even slower rate.

10 minutes ago, wumpus said:

I'd expect something more like a tardigrade would be your typical "interstellar life form".  Note that tardigrades wouldn't be considered "living" between stars, just dried out and dormant [you might need a "super tardigrade" for such journeys], this means absolutely no form of navigation.  Somehow I'd expect the universe to end before these tardigrades actually hit anything.

My understanding of the origin of life on Earth shows no "band" of time between the possibility of life living on Earth and the oldest fossils (presumably with only indirect evidence, since they would be dealing with single celled organisms).  First this shows that Earth wasn't seeded by anything as advanced as a tardigrade (it would have started with complex multicellular life if it had).  It may well have been seeded by RNA-like matter, but if so we should expect at least fossil remains on other planets/moons in the Solar system.

I wasn't specifically suggesting that Tardigrades are the source of all life in the galaxy, perhaps more that they evolved on a dying or low G planet or some form of symbiotic / assisted evolution by another species.

[Green Baron]

8 minutes ago, SpaceMouse said:

Yeah, I thought some form of symbiotic relationship might be required.

 

It was fun from my side.

No fun: co-evolution is not symbiosis ! Nobody would say that horses and grass steppes form a symbiosis, but they are a classical example of co-evolution in the Neogene.

A biological evolution in space belongs to the realm of Star Trek & consorts. For complex organisms to evolve you'd need variation, selection (-> generations !), metabolism, energy, biocenosis, food-pyramids. Impossible in a vacuum.

Edited October 21, 2017 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

Lexx series is fully dedicated to the living spaceships.

[SpaceMouse]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Lexx series is fully dedicated to the living spaceships.

There have been living spaceships throughout Sci-Fi. Not sure Lexx is the greatest example. lol

[NSEP]

How bout sacks of water sucking on Asteroids ice and getting heated up by the sun? And use some of that heat to thrust to other Asteroids, maybe around an a planetary orbit ring? And they also use photosynthesis? Is that not cool? And they evolved from cells who got shot out of Enceladus like Moons into outer space? Dunno if they could've magically evolved photosynthesis.

Im stupid.

[YNM]

12 hours ago, SpaceMouse said:

I assumed they would need some way to hibernate. This is already common in nature and I don't think it would be a huge stretch for it to evolve to a even slower rate.

Yeah, hibernation for the age of the Universe...

 

Which is why I think only stars work for them.

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, YNM said:

Which is why I think only stars work for them.

Only red and white dwarves and neutron stars.
Others are so ephemeral...

Spoiler

8 hours ago, SpaceMouse said:

Not sure Lexx is the greatest example. lol

Definitely the greatest, a whole universe was eliminated in process.
Lexx, His Divine Shadow ship, moths, Carrots/Lyekka, Giga Shadow, that thing which caught Lexx, and so on.

 

[YNM]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Only red and white dwarves and neutron stars.
Others are so ephemeral...

Not really if you consider the "base material" are always there, nearly-recycled.

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, YNM said:

Not really if you consider the "base material" are always there, nearly-recycled.

Imho, you here described conditions in a dense star cluster with a plenty of black holes inside.

Spoiler

P.S.
Long-living Sapient Stars Coalition.
Official flag - tricolor: red color, white color and neutron color.
Official motto: "Pretty small, but freaking smart!".

 

[ARS]

How about weak telekinetic pulse that "push" them lightly on a particular direction?

[Pwnstarr]

solar activated membrane ion pumps that can confer large scale hyperpolarization, achieving an ion-thruster like condition. 

Or maybe it simply farts in the opposite direction of where it wants to go. 

Edited December 11, 2017 by Pwnstarr

[PB666]

On 10/21/2017 at 9:22 AM, Green Baron said:

It was fun from my side.

No fun: co-evolution is not symbiosis ! Nobody would say that horses and grass steppes form a symbiosis, but they are a classical example of co-evolution in the Neogene.

A biological evolution in space belongs to the realm of Star Trek & consorts. For complex organisms to evolve you'd need variation, selection (-> generations !), metabolism, energy, biocenosis, food-pyramids. Impossible in a vacuum.

How about horses and horse flies, lol.

This thread is supposed to be a joke right, telekinetic pulses?

For a biological organism to evolve you only need one thing, mutations, thats all its called random drift . . remember the N_e I referred to in the other thread.

 

Edited December 11, 2017 by PB666

[mikegarrison]

Not to digress too much, but when did it become popular to have organic spaceships? I think you probably could have counted all the stories with living spaceships on one hand before the late 80s, and then suddenly every SF franchise had to have organic spaceships. Am i right about that being the timeframe, or was there some bunch of organic ships that came before then that I simply missed?

Anyway, I don't see how spaceships could evolve. Remember, evolution is never directed. It just happens. If you want organic spaceships, I think you're going to have to be talking about biological engineering, not natural evolution.

[monophonic]

3 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Anyway, I don't see how spaceships could evolve. Remember, evolution is never directed. It just happens. If you want organic spaceships, I think you're going to have to be talking about biological engineering, not natural evolution.

By a breeding program of course. Whether that should be considered directed evolution or crude bioengineering is altogether another discussion. Picking the starting species should be a lot of fun too. I guess it should already have developed a controlled ability to squirt something that could be selected for propulsion.

"I always dreamed of conquering the starts. But I never expected to do it with ships that are, technically, skunks."

[Scotius]

3 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Not to digress too much, but when did it become popular to have organic spaceships? I think you probably could have counted all the stories with living spaceships on one hand before the late 80s, and then suddenly every SF franchise had to have organic spaceships. Am i right about that being the timeframe, or was there some bunch of organic ships that came before then that I simply missed?

Anyway, I don't see how spaceships could evolve. Remember, evolution is never directed. It just happens. If you want organic spaceships, I think you're going to have to be talking about biological engineering, not natural evolution.

Actually, that trope is quite old. In 1935 Murray Leinster wrote a short story "Proxima Centauri". It describes first (and hostile) contact between human expedition arriving at Proxima, with the sentient plantoid species inhabitating the system. Those aliens did use plant-like spaceships that were grown instead of being built. After reaching desired size and shape relevant tissues were "turned off" and behaved like dead matter (presumably to reduce need for the nutrients) until the process was reversed - for example to create a connection with incompatible airlock of human ship.

[NSEP]

This is all i can think of right now. Thanks.

[Scotius]

Anyone remembers flying graboids from "Tremors"?

I remember going "What the... They just didn't... OMG they did...!" Followed by an epic facepalm and helpless laughter.