Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Your Martian Dream Home, Made By Fungi
What could be more homey than a house made by fungus? Especially in outer space.
Just like the astronauts, fungal mycelia is a lifeform that has to eat and breathe. That's where something called cyanobacteria comes in – a kind of bacterium that can use energy from the Sun to convert water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and fungus food.
These pieces come together in an elegant habitat concept with a three-layered dome. The outer-most layer is made up of frozen water ice, perhaps tapped from the resources on the Moon or Mars. That water serves as a protection from radiation and trickles down to the second layer – the cyanobacteria. This layer can take that water and photosynthesize using the outside light that shines through the icy layer to produce oxygen for astronauts and nutrients for the final layer of mycelia.
That last layer of mycelia is what organically grows into a sturdy home, first activated to grow in a contained environment and then baked to kill the lifeforms – providing structural integrity and ensuring no life contaminates Mars and any microbial life that's already there. Even if some mycelia somehow escaped, they will be genetically altered to be incapable of surviving outside the habitat.
(Via NASA)
Science fiction writer Larry Niven started working on this idea in 1968, in A Gift From Earth. He thinks of using ocean coral as a building material:
...A genetic manipulation of ordinary sea coral, it was the cheapest building material known. The only real cost was in the plastic balloon that guided the growth of the coral and enclosed the coral's special air-borne food.
NASA scientists (and you) might be interested in the ideas that sf writer Greg Bear described in Killing Titan; see vehicle seeds, a way to save on delivery costs by using materials present at the destination.
The myco-architecture project can't just design a shell – it's designing a home. That home is more than a set of walls – it has its own ecosystem of sorts, with multiple kinds of organisms alongside the humans it's designed to protect.
The remnants of the shaping balloon, which gave all architectural coral buildings their telltale bulge, had been carefully scraped away...
(Read more about Larry Niven's architectural coral)
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/5/2022)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Materials ")
FlexRAM Liquid Metal RAM And One Particular SF Movie Robot
'Its lines wavered, flowed, and then painfully reformed.' - Philip K. Dick, 1957.
Your Martian Dream Home, Made By Fungi
'... it was the cheapest building material known.' - Larry Niven, 1968.
3D Printed Glass Uses Stereolithography Techniques
'All that with glass...' - Frank Herbert, 1972.
Engineered Living Building Materials
'... it was the cheapest building material known.' Larry Niven, 1968.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Miss Alabama Beauty Contest Offers Different Standards
'...they moved with the ease of dandelion puffs.'
Has Musk Given Up On Full Self Driving (FSD)?
'...some bored drone pusher in a remote driving centre...'
Prufrock-3 'The Monster' Ready To Launch
Just go for it.
Drones In Vast Airborne Grids
'These pods were programmed to hang in space in a hexagonal grid pattern...'
Starship Special Edition For Lunar Shuttle
Love those special edition spaceships.
Capturing Asteroids With Nets
'...the meteor caught and halted just as a small boy catches a swift ball in his cap.'
Project Hyperion - Generation Ship Designers Needed!
'We have decided that it shall be but one ship... it must contain everything needed to take us through the generations.'
AI Welfare Position At Anthropic Filled By Human
'You’re the robopsychologist of the plant, so you’re to study the robot itself...'
Marslink Proposed By SpaceX
'It was the heart of the Solar System's communication line...'
Simple Way To Defeat AI Face Recognition
'... designed to foil facial recognition systems.'
Wood-Panelled LignoSat Launched
'The Consul remembered his first glimpse of the kilometer-long treeship...'
Laser-Beam Welding In Orbital Factories
'His contract with Space Industries required him to work summers in their orbital factory.'
'Iceberg House' Of Travis Kelce Reflects Science Fiction Of Past Century
'The basement was huge... carved deep into the rock that folded up to underlie the ridge...'
Mechazilla Arms Catch A Falling Starship, But Check Out SF Landing-ARMS
'...the rocket’s landing-arms automatically unfolded.'
A System To Defeat AI Face Recognition
'...points and patches of light... sliding all over their faces in a programmed manner that had been designed to foil facial recognition systems.'
Robot Hand Separate From Robot
'The crawling, exploring object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
