Scifi Maturation Chambers... Remotely Feasible Or Pure Fiction?

[Spacescifi]

Scenario: How many times have you seen birthing/maturation chambers that grow an infant to an adult body in a matter of hours or days at most? In scifi?

Do you think this is remotely possible?

My thoughts: Yes.... a remote yes though.

Factors involved:

1.  God mode bio-engineering. The ability to create whole new designer species is a prerequisite. Whatever body made must be DESIGNED for rapid maturation inside the chamber but somehow go back to normal aging time when released.

2. No human size normal body has the energy or nutrients to grow from infancy to adulthood in hours or even days. The chamber must supply all of that, and the bioengineered body must be designed to take such concentrated energy and nutrients inside a relative short window of time.

 

Doubts: Perhaps a body of flesh could absorb all the nutrients and energy required to grow it to adulthood in hours... but I reckon it would need cooling to avoid overheating.

 

Thoughts on this subject?

Edited July 21, 2023 by Spacescifi

[DDE]

Bought RimWorld: Biotech, have you? Anyway...

 

Cancer.

Human growth isn't just restricted by nutrients, the ability of cells to replicate is also finite, and I'm really worried that by supercharging it you're going to get certain malfunctions in gene replication. That's assuming the things you grow are actually human and are not radically reengineered for such growth - at which point the growth chambers become kind of superfluous, at most providing a sterile environment in case the growth comes at the cost of an immune system deficiency.

 

Googling "accelerated growth", I've found studies on the phenomenon of accelerated compensatory growth due to abatement of a prior dietary deficit - the specimen catch up in size but not in brain power: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040270

Spoiler

P.S. An irreverent Russian joke: you can't bring down the pregnancy to 1 month by throwing nine women at the problem

 

[Spacescifi]

32 minutes ago, DDE said:

Bought RimWorld: Biotech, have you? Anyway...

 

Cancer.

Human growth isn't just restricted by nutrients, the ability of cells to replicate is also finite, and I'm really worried that by supercharging it you're going to get certain malfunctions in gene replication. That's assuming the things you grow are actually human and are not radically reengineered for such growth - at which point the growth chambers become kind of superfluous, at most providing a sterile environment in case the growth comes at the cost of an immune system deficiency.

 

Googling "accelerated growth", I've found studies on the phenomenon of accelerated compensatory growth due to abatement of a prior dietary deficit - the specimen catch up in size but not in brain power: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040270

  Hide contents

P.S. An irreverent Russian joke: you can't bring down the pregnancy to 1 month by throwing nine women at the problem

 

 

Interesting.... and no I did not even know about the book... I was just brainstorming.

Strangely, without even knowing about the adult dummy syndrome you just mentioned I already had a baked-in solution of sorts.

Spoiler

I had an earlier thread where I considered the possibility of using biology to emulate or copy computer abilities.

In this scenario, the maturation chamber grows a humanoid body of flesh and blood that is essentially the avatar of the starship itself, living and breathing. It has a constant link to the spaceship when in range and can even control it with a thought or see anything it sees or detects or hears.

In addition it has the memories of all the AI starship's missions and interactions with crew up until the avatar is born.

So rather than being born with a blank slate, the avatar has the memories and personality of the starship AI, and it's life going forward shapes it's personality after.

So in a sense, mindwise, it is already an adult when matured into one... just it never had a body until then.

 

 

Edited July 21, 2023 by Spacescifi

[KSK]

Bacterial cell division can happen in as little as 20 minutes. That would give 3 doublings of your cell population per hour or 72 doublings per day.

So, assuming no nutrient restrictions, and that each cell has a lifetime of at least 24 hours, one cell could give rise to 2⁷² -1 cells in 24 hours, or (assuming my calculator is correct), approximately 2.36 x10²¹. That's... a lot of cells.  Enough to make several million human shaped piles of bacteria in fact, assuming that this estimate is about correct.

If you want another example of the absurd numbers you can reach by unrestricted doubling, read up on the wheat and chessboard problem:

"If a chessboard were to have wheat placed upon each square such that one grain were placed on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and so on (doubling the number of grains on each subsequent square), how many grains of wheat would be on the chessboard at the finish?"

TL:  DR version - you end up with about 1.4 trillion metric tons of wheat on the board. Presumably stacked very, very high.

Human cell division is substantially slower at around 2 hours. That would give us a mere 12 doublings in 24 hours, or 4,095 cells from one cell. Which, admittedly,  is still pretty impressive, and enough of a mass increase to create a human adult from a human infant.

The thing is, as @DDE already pointed out, mass increase is least of the problems here. For one, human cells  have a limited capacity to replicate.  For two, the human cell cycle also has a whole raft of time-consuming checks and balances which (almost always) ensure that the dividing cells don't turn cancerous, and that any aberrantly divided cells self-destruct in a process called apoptosis. For three, the newly divided cells need to get to the right place in the developing body and need to be doing the right things when they get there, which (I assume) takes more time.

Mess around with any of the above without invoking some suitably hand-wavy sci-fi bioengineering, and you're more likely to end up with a six-foot quivering heap of tumour, than a functional human adult.

 

 

 

 

[kerbiloid]

They could grow uncut joint twins as a single pack, then separate them.

Spoiler

 

[DDE]

4 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

It has a constant link to the spaceship when in range and can even control it with a thought or see anything it sees or detects or hears.

However, unless you synch up the main computer and the brain, all the time, what you get is a cyranoid rather than the actual avatar. A meat puppet with its own mind, which strays from its puppeteer's the moment the connection is disrupted.

And ethical nightmare, in summary. Easier to grow a human brain-dead and turn it into an actual, proper puppet.

4 hours ago, KSK said:

For three, the newly divided cells need to get to the right place in the developing body and need to be doing the right things when they get there, which (I assume) takes more time.

If you're trying to compress the growth process so much that its becomes an issue, it's probably much easier to just 3D-print the tissue in situ from cultivated cells.

This could also allow you to assemble a chimera where various tissues have a tweaked genetic code to facilitate your end goals.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

If you're trying to compress the growth process so much that its becomes an issue, it's probably much easier to just 3D-print the tissue in situ from cultivated cells.

The Russian speakers readers can enjoy the furryturistic epic book http://haritonov.wiki/Золотой_ключ,_или_Похождения_Буратины , but it's only in Russian and strongly 18+.

[Spacescifi]

3 hours ago, DDE said:

However, unless you synch up the main computer and the brain, all the time, what you get is a cyranoid rather than the actual avatar. A meat puppet with its own mind, which strays from its puppeteer's the moment the connection is disrupted.

And ethical nightmare, in summary. Easier to grow a human brain-dead and turn it into an actual, proper puppet.

If you're trying to compress the growth process so much that its becomes an issue, it's probably much easier to just 3D-print the tissue in situ from cultivated cells.

This could also allow you to assemble a chimera where various tissues have a tweaked genetic code to facilitate your end goals.

 

Spoiler

For point 1: She is not meant to be a puppet though (and yeah, given that classically people refer to ships as female I thought why not have the avatar also be). In fact her very value lies in the fact that she can do things and go places the ship cannot. Furthermore she.... knows all the ship did during it's time it's memories were recorded before she was "born". Besides, while in range, she has access to it's entire computer database so can pull up and read anything from it's massive databanks anytime she wants.

So while she is a hige asset for the ship she is also a security risk.

You might wonder what human company would possibly do this?

They did'nt. It's an alien vessel and it's AI creates ship avatars to assist new crew thst enter it. Another alien crew would get a different avatar.

It's is kind of like Transformers, but with starships and they don't transform... they build and create.

"We are the creators. Welcome in! We will adapt to serve you. Your biological and technological distinctiveness must adapt to us if you want our service (free starship to travel the galaxy/explore). Any volunteers? Which one of you is brave enough to enter?"(lowers ramp for ship entry).

Like Transformers there are both good and evil AI spaceships that exist... unlike Transformers I don't intend for the plot to be constantly about some world or galaxy ending threat.

 

 

Interesting that you mention 3d printing... that sounds more gross than a maturation chamber but also kind of cool. Like a body assembly line line with ready made parts you just attach already made. Cool. Horrifically cool!

Edited July 21, 2023 by Spacescifi

[magnemoe]

7 hours ago, DDE said:

However, unless you synch up the main computer and the brain, all the time, what you get is a cyranoid rather than the actual avatar. A meat puppet with its own mind, which strays from its puppeteer's the moment the connection is disrupted.

And ethical nightmare, in summary. Easier to grow a human brain-dead and turn it into an actual, proper puppet.

If you're trying to compress the growth process so much that its becomes an issue, it's probably much easier to just 3D-print the tissue in situ from cultivated cells.

This could also allow you to assemble a chimera where various tissues have a tweaked genetic code to facilitate your end goals.

cyranoid: now that is an mind breaking concept, on the other hand actors does that every day if I understood it, obviously the actor know its all fake and can stop. 

And the only reason you want human minds is because they are better than AI and that would be at the strategic level or operations the other side did not imagined. 
This is not only military but also economic. 

3d printing organs is an hot topic as it would solve the lack of donors issues, its also very hard so hard doing it in micro-gravity is an option. Yes that require fully reusable heavy lift rockets but they are much easier to do. 
Doing backups of brains and then print brains and bodies enables resurrection.