I've been hearing an increasingly great deal about mushroom biomass and mycelium as a possible supermaterial, not for its indestructability, but for its versatility; an edible material that can be made into sturdy blocks, packing material, containers, you name it. I am ready for humanity to transcend mammaldom and become one with our unkillable fungal kin
@@0reo2 Looking Back at the 21st Century, Hosted by Issac Arthur's Silicon-Based Neuron Matrix. "Today we will look at what I thought back when I was an organic life-form. What did I get right? What did I get wrong? Its going to be a long one, so you might want to uncalibrate your GPS modules and deactivate Process 47 before we get started.
@@isaacarthurSFIA I would like to know how primitive a society could be deposited on, say, the moon and survive off of their own designs. This is assuming they get to import their initial structures and tools.
I used to listen to Isaac Arthur when I drove truck and now that I'm disabled and can't work this is one of the few things I look forward to every week.
this is one I've been talking about with my friends for ages; if/when we fully understand the very nature of how genetics function, we should be able to genetically engineer trees and grasses and other such flora so that they naturally grow into shapes most convenient to us. that could be anything from perfectly dimensioned natural lumber offshoots to harvest without harming their massive, neighborhood-shading, carbon-sequestering, mineral-mining mother tree... to whole custom plantable, living, pest-resistant homes with windows facing south, built-in transpiration-powered AC and extra deep, earthquake-proof tap roots pumping up more fresh water from an aquifer below than it needs, eliminating the need for sub-surface plumbing-maybe even mycelium modified to carry neurochemical data streams and high-voltage currents alike. it's the key to truly shaping our environment to live symbiotically with our technology instead of parasitically choking it out for our own continued convenience.
So we're going to live in a village of mushrooms. We can walk around shirtless because gene mods protects us from solar radiation--but unfortunately they also turn our skin blue and make us substitute the word "smurf" for most verbs...
And then some privater comes onto your planet using advanced technology that looks like magic cauldrons and stuff because he's hipster like that. No idea what he is up to. Trying to turn the people into gold? Eat them? Just cause trouble?
I've been following you since the very first episode. Thank you so much for the amazing content and for continuing to stretch my imagination and reaffirm my belief that we will one day populate the stars.
@@Darenz-cg9zg James Smith is a cool name. Where I grew up, there were more Clarke's than smith's in the phone book, so I kinda thought my name was as common as mud!
I love this! I have been pondering the idea of a wizard that ascends into a Lich so she can become an optimal astronaut and then studies geomancy to summon golems and build a Dyson swarm from the planet closest to her sun. I know that has nothing to do with science but it is principally the same process.
I just felt very cool, you talked about a dust-free hardened pad, I worked on the NASA X-HAB rover concept for preparing these exact surfaces as my senior design project at NDSU. Yeah I know, weird flex, but there aren't many places I get to brag about that.
My favorite takeaway from this is hearing Isaac talk about malfunctioning self replicators building random crap on ships and habitats causing me to think " Huh. So, greeblies. Neat."
I remember some game (I think “Brink”?); the game was so-so, but the lore had an interesting concept. Everyone lived on a city sized, man made, island. The island was made of genetically engineered coral, this coral could be programmed to grow into any shape desired. I always liked this concept… more than the game itself.
The Namibia Project, that blew my mind! Who knows what other green space project may help Earth.... The future will be green and high tech. Your chance should be required view for the next generation...
A Second Chance at Eden by Peter F Hamilton (prequel of the Nights Dawn trilogy) introduces bitech habitats much like an O’Neil cylinder but with a light tube on its axis instead of mirrors. A seed the size of a large house with a maw at the end to feed it raw materials and kilometer long hairlike cables jutting out from the habitat; orbiting from a giant gas planet; receiving energy. Growth is about 100 years to full maturity…about 10 km long. Good read considering the ore process.
The Arthur C Clarke book The Songs of Distance Earth used this idea for interstellar colonization and it is great that someone of your stature has resurrected this idea, glad it is you in light of your name...
A new SFIA video. What a wonderful early birthday gift. Most informative as always Isaac, many ideas for more bold Sci-Fi writers to draw inspiration from for yet more good books.
Just found your channel and feel like I have been missing so much for so long! Thank you for all the hard work you have done, now I just need to allocate a few weeks to catch up.
How far in advance must the prep & landing bots arrive? I propose "the coffee test". Assume that many of the best people will refuse to land until good fresh-grown coffee is waiting.
As I was anticipating SFIAs Self-Growing Habitats & Space Bases, I was so totally envisioning Peter F. Hamilton's "Night's Dawn Trilogy"'s Edenist Bitek habitats... but was delighted to actually see it was more relatable to Peyo's Smurf's toadstool homes !
Great episode. Tree houses in spaaaace!! I think I first started watching this channel while poking around about "maximum population density while having a great quality of life" (i.e. Judge Dredd megacities but non-awful, and incorporating D 'n D aspects like physics-defying plants from other planes of existence), quickly progressed to ecumenopoli and other megastructures...and now days I can't imagine a 'biotech' protag troubling themselves with megastructures anywhere other than space.
Thanks, now I want to run a sci-fi TTRPG game set in a malfunctioning outpost seed. Distorted fractal, winding structures more absurd than Villa Straylight, full of malfunctioning biorobots. The players looking to recover lost technology...
I am really liking the idea of a small mechanical seed ship being sent on ahead of a colony ship. The mechanical seed ship gets to the system first and sets up an O'Neil cylinder for the people in the colony ship. On the other side of things the mechanical seed ship could also be settling things up for a biological seed ship. If the biological seed ship also brought along a series of androids with uploaded minds to oversee the system startup, that would be pretty cool.
I can see O'Neil Cylinders being terrific to produce by automated machinery. A giant smelter/extruder could clunk out simple gigantic panels, weld them together, pump it full of air so human dudes could work inside without suits...
@@jengleheimerschmitt7941 the way I figure things is if a construction ship or fleet is sent first then study and potential colonization of the solar system will go more smoothly and have a higher chance of success. If for some reason the system doesn't meet the criteria for study/colonization then it can gather resources for the fleets to move on to the next system. It could also potentially build a second set of fleets to go to yet another system.
When I hear of the idea of growing habitats, I’m reminded of the biological space ship from Arthur C. Clark and Gregory Benford’s Beyond the Fall of Night. I’ve been intrigued by the concept ever since reading this novel in my youth.
Fascinating as always. Just one comment about inflatable habitats. I think they would have to ban cats from these places as every inflatable thing I have ever owned has been quickly destroyed by one or other of my pet cats. RIP inflatable swimming pool alligator.
As a GMO of Dagobah, UR missing out on a really good experience of the wonderful fragrance of our planet. Do try to explore the planet. "Do or do not... there is no try. "🤪
Having a settlement on another world be as comfortable as possible would go a long way towards preserving human mental health on that planet or moon. All to often, the psychological needs of potential space settlers is not considered at all. But in fact, psychological needs are just as important to meet as physical needs are.
*Issac* Last week Lex Fridman interviewed Arial Ekblaw about self-assembling space habitats. Absolutely brilliant ideas she's working on. And they are shipping some miniature prototypes to ISS soon for field testing. I'd love to hear you talk to her also. It's just your cup of coffee.
I may have said this before. No matter what body, without an atmosphere. that humans want to inhabit it is vital that habitats should be built IN the body NOT on the body. Bulldozing regolith to bury a habitat on the moon will not protect the machinery or the expected settlers from a C.M.E. On the other hand, thank you Mr. Arthur for expanding so many minds.
scientists: growing mushrooms to build habitats to live in while on other celestial bodies.... me: wake up. you were dreaming. ive heard them say we reached morrowind. quiet. here comes the guard.
An orbital colony with a "kitten, puppy, and pony" theme, no sharp corners and cheeseburgers? Who do I see about making a reservation :) For the first time in decades, I feel optimistic about the future.
One of the problems of futurism is to define new words that don't mean the same thing as other words - a tree is not a coral is not a self-replicating-nanomachine-hive-latice, tho these can share important segments of their definitions. As we expand and experiment we will inevitibly modify what we can modify most easily, while pursuing other methods - technology has surpassed animals in transportation but not in food production. The first interplanetary inhabitants will spend time living out of their vehicles while building an inhabitable environment, whether these inhabitants are human, machine, plant, or animal. Whether these vehicles are expanded using inflatable mattresses of anti-radiation-algae that then freeze into a wall of star-grown frozen soup that later become the greenhouse windows of the first settlement, that remains to be seen, but it it unlikely that any substantial groups will choose anything far from the most efficient methods available. Solar collection and mining will become an immediate order of business, because life uses recources and space has immense resources in very specific places - how these occur will will likely resemble modifications of existing methods, at first. The environments available in space are harsh, but in a way that technologies are suited to adapt to - vaccuum, radiation, and extremes of temperature - and for technology to adapt to support life to fill gaps where technology is inefficient - replication, organic chemical assembly, self-adaptation. At some point we must ask - what is the line between science and nature, when what we call natural only survives because of science. At what point is a person a cyborg, or a mech-pilot, or a dude in a suit?
FWIW, it looks like a different episode was accidentally uploaded on Nebula last night. The title is, "Self-Growing Habitats & Space Bases" but the content is "Alien Civilizations - Multi-Species Empires"
8:40 Remembering the problem derrigables had with wind, how windy is Venus? Their problem was more the difference in wind caused forces between one end and the other overstressing something.
I've got a question for fans or Arthur himself. A long time ago when discussing megastructure weapons, you mentioned that you had created a post describing a mega weapon that utilized multiple stars. Do you know what that was called, I have not been able to find the video where you mentioned it. And you never did a stand alone video discussing it.
There was a series of books called the Reality Disfunction by Peter F Hamilton that used genetically engineered habitats that had corral as the outer crust. Very cool books.
bioship whales are my fave. a long way off but i can dream. thanks Isaac! the zero g space cathedral thing that MIt girl talked about on LEX recently was amazing. would love to visit that up, ride the oribtal ring to LEO and worship in the literal heavens! would love to see aerogel manufacturing on the moon soon. mars is dumb. it motivates people i guess but i think free space settlement would sell people on space alot better, especially the orbital ring. most people are anti space because of ideas like settling mars which is just crazy honestly. cool but crazy.
This reminds me of the giant bamboo houses in KSR's Mars Trilogy. They had genetically engineered giant bamboo with something like a 40-foot base diameter. They'd grow forests of it and then cut in doors and windows and stairways to turn it into high-rise living space.
I think minor genetic engineering would allow humans to live in zero gravity permanently and deal with radiation. Colonizing planets seems like a waste of resources. With some moderately more complicated genetic modification we could probably edit feet and legs into arms and hands. Having four arms and hands seems like it would be useful in zero G.
I'm imagining possible macro-organisms of sorts where these self assembling colonies could grow and specialize functioning as one giant entity that floats through the universe, replicating and evolving the way simple life forms became complex multicellular life on earth. Given enough time they could even become sort of super intelligences. We'd have essentially created living, breathing gods.
Nice episode! Question: What is a lunar base to do for power in the two week long night? I imagine the first one will be at the pole where you have unending sunlight available. But that might get crowded, fast. What are the chances that the moon has uranium or thorium? Gerald O'Neill proposed giant power station in orbit beaming down microwave power to the Earth - might work in the lunar night? Maybe solar panel at L2 using masers beaming power to the lunar colonies?
They can store thermal energy pretty easily & efficiently in a vacuum. They can also put solar power collectors up on towers to get the same benefits as being on crater rims & polar locations(longer day) & to facilitate power beaming. Nuclear energy is good & there's just as much nuclear fuel on the moon as there is here. Though since the moon never had a water cycle none of that is very concentrated so probably wouldn't be very economical to extract in the beginning.
One thing that occurred to me, if a lot of asteroids are powdery a la the target of the Hayabusa mission they would make it ideal for 3-D printing rather than mining, sort particles and then just print directly, greatly simplify the processing the minerals. At least make extraction easier. A hoover with a couple of filters and an inkjet.
oh, the under 50 like club. I'm almost never awake this early.... Help I haven't slept, lol. The idea of 'self-growing habitats' reminds me of an old Star Wars EU book or two....
I was reading a scifi novel about interstellar probes replicating and using 3d printing to build material atom by atom. An interesting problem is how many lifetimes of the universe it would take to build one gram of metal alloy at say 1000 atoms per second.
Listened to it on nebula. I think there’s a mistake that’s been made. On nebula it has this title but when I played the video it was “multi species empires” instead. Edit: looks like the issue has been fixed on nebula
If anyone here has been reading the X-Men comics for the past year, then this video will be uniquely satisfying. 😉 Mr. Arthur, I don't know if you follow Marvel comics, but I highly suggest you check out the House of X/Powers of X comics that came out in 2019. They borrow heavily from concepts about self-growing habitats, both on Earth and in space.
My Theory is that sending a seed module to Venus to grow a floating colony there, by synthesizing all the materials it needs from the atmosphere, is likely the best, if not the only viable way to start developing such infrastructure there. And because you would be working with chemical synthesis processes rather than soil manipulation, in order to get your materials, there could likely be much less wear and tear occurring to equipment, and thus less need for vital repairs which may need human oversight.
Isaac, have you ever read "Dimar: Lost Waters"? It's a mid-sized novel released to the public domain, fully & freely available online: just search for the title. Author is Dee Dreslough. In that story, the titular native Dimar species are masters of biotech & genetic manipulation: all their technology is grown, living, and ecologically green. They live in huge zero-emission arcology-sized "barryds" that are literally grown from thousands of engineered symbiotic plant species: it's basically a huge living organism that is simultaneously a city-sized tree, farm, telepathic computer for the inhabitants, and a mostly self-contained microcosm. To found a new city, they literally package up a big seed pod and plant it where they want to start. I think it'd be interesting to hear in your thoughts on various interesting technology concepts in the book, such as the active-cell loaded "Water" they use for rapidly repairing injuries and reshaping living beings on the macro & genetic level. It blurs the line between a Bacta tank and programmable matter.
One part of establishing an outpost on the moon that I have not seen is whether or not people will complain about "that eyesore" ruining the moon's aesthetics. There have been some ugly structures built throughout history but you could often get around that by moving away. If you plonk an early industrial outpost on the Earth-facing side I can already hear the complaints and terrible poetry about man's hubris and spreading corruption over nature's beauty. As with a lot of things, most people are happy to have the benefits so long as it isn't "in my backyard", but this will be there every time you look up. Obviously, I'm for progress and the future and would love to see orbital rings and infrastructure develop, preferably before I die, I just think that perhaps these issues might be considered before the second coming of brutalism or some megacorp slaps their logo on it.
Have you heard of concrete cloth???? Semi-perminate structures that is filled with air and the soaked with Water. This is a material that can be used for getting started.
I've been hearing an increasingly great deal about mushroom biomass and mycelium as a possible supermaterial, not for its indestructability, but for its versatility; an edible material that can be made into sturdy blocks, packing material, containers, you name it. I am ready for humanity to transcend mammaldom and become one with our unkillable fungal kin
So you also saw that 1963 sci-fi monster movie from Japan where a group of people landed on that island, ”Matango”.
Sounds like warhammer 40k orcs 😅
Unkillable? Wait… are you suggest we strive to become… Fungal Zombies?!
Sounds like a short cut to The Girl With All the Gifts
I think a cool idea for an episode would be looking at past predictions for the future.
I usually do that to remind myself to be less confident in my won guesses, but it might make a fun episode.
We'd have to start with Thomas Malthus.
The issue with that is though, that even the "near future" scenarios are realistically decades or even 100s of years away
@@0reo2 Looking Back at the 21st Century, Hosted by Issac Arthur's Silicon-Based Neuron Matrix.
"Today we will look at what I thought back when I was an organic life-form. What did I get right? What did I get wrong?
Its going to be a long one, so you might want to uncalibrate your GPS modules and deactivate Process 47 before we get started.
@@isaacarthurSFIA I would like to know how primitive a society could be deposited on, say, the moon and survive off of their own designs. This is assuming they get to import their initial structures and tools.
I used to listen to Isaac Arthur when I drove truck and now that I'm disabled and can't work this is one of the few things I look forward to every week.
this is one I've been talking about with my friends for ages; if/when we fully understand the very nature of how genetics function, we should be able to genetically engineer trees and grasses and other such flora so that they naturally grow into shapes most convenient to us. that could be anything from perfectly dimensioned natural lumber offshoots to harvest without harming their massive, neighborhood-shading, carbon-sequestering, mineral-mining mother tree... to whole custom plantable, living, pest-resistant homes with windows facing south, built-in transpiration-powered AC and extra deep, earthquake-proof tap roots pumping up more fresh water from an aquifer below than it needs, eliminating the need for sub-surface plumbing-maybe even mycelium modified to carry neurochemical data streams and high-voltage currents alike. it's the key to truly shaping our environment to live symbiotically with our technology instead of parasitically choking it out for our own continued convenience.
Well said!!!
So we're going to live in a village of mushrooms. We can walk around shirtless because gene mods protects us from solar radiation--but unfortunately they also turn our skin blue and make us substitute the word "smurf" for most verbs...
Why wouldn't we use the Standard Meaning Universal Reference Format to replace all those confusing, over-complicated verbs?
😮😳😝😂
And then some privater comes onto your planet using advanced technology that looks like magic cauldrons and stuff because he's hipster like that. No idea what he is up to. Trying to turn the people into gold? Eat them? Just cause trouble?
Indeed, it's possible, albeit unlikely, that some people could evolve into Smurf like beings.
I'm blue da ba dee da bu daaa da ba dee da bu daa
I've been following you since the very first episode. Thank you so much for the amazing content and for continuing to stretch my imagination and reaffirm my belief that we will one day populate the stars.
That old intro song plays in my head first thing in the morning, once in awhile.
You're very welcome Ryan, thanks for Watching!
Seems like all the top comments are people with cool names, I'm jealous.
@@Darenz-cg9zg James Smith is a cool name. Where I grew up, there were more Clarke's than smith's in the phone book, so I kinda thought my name was as common as mud!
I love this! I have been pondering the idea of a wizard that ascends into a Lich so she can become an optimal astronaut and then studies geomancy to summon golems and build a Dyson swarm from the planet closest to her sun.
I know that has nothing to do with science but it is principally the same process.
That may be the most creative reason for opting to become undead I've heard :)
/squintsinsuspicion "Sounds like someone's trying out some Headology".
I just felt very cool, you talked about a dust-free hardened pad, I worked on the NASA X-HAB rover concept for preparing these exact surfaces as my senior design project at NDSU. Yeah I know, weird flex, but there aren't many places I get to brag about that.
I'm in constant pain, your show is one of the few things that can keep my head in a good place.
If you're sad, don't be sad!
I love your videos and your content is an inspiration to us all!
Take care of your self and keep up the amazing work!
Me also
My favorite takeaway from this is hearing Isaac talk about malfunctioning self replicators building random crap on ships and habitats causing me to think " Huh. So, greeblies. Neat."
I remember some game (I think “Brink”?); the game was so-so, but the lore had an interesting concept. Everyone lived on a city sized, man made, island. The island was made of genetically engineered coral, this coral could be programmed to grow into any shape desired. I always liked this concept… more than the game itself.
The Namibia Project, that blew my mind! Who knows what other green space project may help Earth.... The future will be green and high tech. Your chance should be required view for the next generation...
It's awesome how Isaac can take a concept and really explore the its ramifications. Keep the good work!!!
A Second Chance at Eden by Peter F Hamilton (prequel of the Nights Dawn trilogy) introduces bitech habitats much like an O’Neil cylinder but with a light tube on its axis instead of mirrors.
A seed the size of a large house with a maw at the end to feed it raw materials and kilometer long hairlike cables jutting out from the habitat; orbiting from a giant gas planet; receiving energy.
Growth is about 100 years to full maturity…about 10 km long.
Good read considering the ore process.
I've been talking about this for a long time, an O'Neill Cylinder that grows another one out the end of it like a bacteria #SequentialRingHabitats
Give the population something to do.
You could just keep adding ring sections to make the cylinders longer, and then partition and pop them into two.
@@JCAtkeson3 my comment history I suppose. maybe I'll put something together for that purpose.
Great one, can’t wait for the whole of it. Reminds me of the Templars in Dan Simmons’ books!
I love this channel more than any other RUclips channel. Isaac, I commend the work that you do. Thank you for your time
6:00 This is some fine Telvanni technology.
The Arthur C Clarke book The Songs of Distance Earth used this idea for interstellar colonization and it is great that someone of your stature has resurrected this idea, glad it is you in light of your name...
A new SFIA video. What a wonderful early birthday gift.
Most informative as always Isaac, many ideas for more bold Sci-Fi writers to draw inspiration from for yet more good books.
I had already listened to the podcast version but I had to see the visualization on this topic. Excellent topic.
Just found your channel and feel like I have been missing so much for so long! Thank you for all the hard work you have done, now I just need to allocate a few weeks to catch up.
I am growing a small house from fused Ivy. I have bigger plans for later in Portugal.
22:50 this reminds me of the Seedship game.
How far in advance must the prep & landing bots arrive? I propose "the coffee test". Assume that many of the best people will refuse to land until good fresh-grown coffee is waiting.
As I was anticipating SFIAs Self-Growing Habitats & Space Bases, I was so totally envisioning Peter F. Hamilton's "Night's Dawn Trilogy"'s Edenist Bitek habitats... but was delighted to actually see it was more relatable to Peyo's Smurf's toadstool homes !
Great episode. Tree houses in spaaaace!! I think I first started watching this channel while poking around about "maximum population density while having a great quality of life" (i.e. Judge Dredd megacities but non-awful, and incorporating D 'n D aspects like physics-defying plants from other planes of existence), quickly progressed to ecumenopoli and other megastructures...and now days I can't imagine a 'biotech' protag troubling themselves with megastructures anywhere other than space.
Very enjoyable episode with lots of fun speculations, Keep up the great work, Isaac!
Why is this channel sub count not over 1 million yet!? Excellent episode Isaac!
Thanks, now I want to run a sci-fi TTRPG game set in a malfunctioning outpost seed. Distorted fractal, winding structures more absurd than Villa Straylight, full of malfunctioning biorobots. The players looking to recover lost technology...
And the system deciding that the players are useful sources of refined materials?
@@toddkes5890 You could go that way with it, but I think the word I'd use to model behaviour would be "infestation".
You could even call it something like _Metamorphosis Alpha_ .
@@harbl99 Yeah, a bit on the nose...
Not gunna lie this sounds fun, and reminds me of Rendezvous with Rama a bit
I am really liking the idea of a small mechanical seed ship being sent on ahead of a colony ship. The mechanical seed ship gets to the system first and sets up an O'Neil cylinder for the people in the colony ship.
On the other side of things the mechanical seed ship could also be settling things up for a biological seed ship. If the biological seed ship also brought along a series of androids with uploaded minds to oversee the system startup, that would be pretty cool.
I can see O'Neil Cylinders being terrific to produce by automated machinery. A giant smelter/extruder could clunk out simple gigantic panels, weld them together, pump it full of air so human dudes could work inside without suits...
@@jengleheimerschmitt7941 the way I figure things is if a construction ship or fleet is sent first then study and potential colonization of the solar system will go more smoothly and have a higher chance of success.
If for some reason the system doesn't meet the criteria for study/colonization then it can gather resources for the fleets to move on to the next system. It could also potentially build a second set of fleets to go to yet another system.
When I hear of the idea of growing habitats, I’m reminded of the biological space ship from Arthur C. Clark and Gregory Benford’s Beyond the Fall of Night. I’ve been intrigued by the concept ever since reading this novel in my youth.
Don't mind me; I'll just be floating through space in my big ol' Mushroom
Hyperion tree spaceship
This channel is a gift
Fascinating as always. Just one comment about inflatable habitats. I think they would have to ban cats from these places as every inflatable thing I have ever owned has been quickly destroyed by one or other of my pet cats. RIP inflatable swimming pool alligator.
Awesome and majestic as always 🌍💯
27:27 Insert obligatory warhammer 40k head nod here.
I love Issac's voice now lol. You know you got the good stuff when you hear that voice. Its just amazing content.
As a GMO of Dagobah, UR missing out on a really good experience of the wonderful fragrance of our planet. Do try to explore the planet. "Do or do not... there is no try. "🤪
i love this concept and how plausible the idea is!
Stellasers, woohoo! :)
Having a settlement on another world be as comfortable as possible would go a long way towards preserving human mental health on that planet or moon. All to often, the psychological needs of potential space settlers is not considered at all. But in fact, psychological needs are just as important to meet as physical needs are.
*Issac* Last week Lex Fridman interviewed Arial Ekblaw about self-assembling space habitats. Absolutely brilliant ideas she's working on. And they are shipping some miniature prototypes to ISS soon for field testing. I'd love to hear you talk to her also. It's just your cup of coffee.
This is great, thank you Isaac
Ahh I needed this last night before bed
Dude's crazy! This is way too much work!
Another enjoyable episode. Thanks!
I may have said this before. No matter what body, without an atmosphere. that humans want to inhabit it is vital that habitats should be built IN the body NOT on the body. Bulldozing regolith to bury a habitat on the moon will not protect the machinery or the expected settlers from a C.M.E. On the other hand, thank you Mr. Arthur for expanding so many minds.
I feel like this series is just a setup for the Dark Ages of Technology, minus warp travel.
All of this is set in the golden age of humanity
scientists: growing mushrooms to build habitats to live in while on other celestial bodies....
me: wake up. you were dreaming. ive heard them say we reached morrowind. quiet. here comes the guard.
This topic made me think of the living O'Neil cylinders in the Night's Dawn trilogy.
Well, the vacuum of space is great for "growing" crystaline structures.
The no sharp corners comment brings to mind making new worlds that are accessible to the diversity of humanity from the start.
I am surprised for the early upload of your video. I like it.😯🙂
An orbital colony with a "kitten, puppy, and pony" theme, no sharp corners and cheeseburgers? Who do I see about making a reservation :)
For the first time in decades, I feel optimistic about the future.
great food for thought
One of the problems of futurism is to define new words that don't mean the same thing as other words - a tree is not a coral is not a self-replicating-nanomachine-hive-latice, tho these can share important segments of their definitions. As we expand and experiment we will inevitibly modify what we can modify most easily, while pursuing other methods - technology has surpassed animals in transportation but not in food production. The first interplanetary inhabitants will spend time living out of their vehicles while building an inhabitable environment, whether these inhabitants are human, machine, plant, or animal. Whether these vehicles are expanded using inflatable mattresses of anti-radiation-algae that then freeze into a wall of star-grown frozen soup that later become the greenhouse windows of the first settlement, that remains to be seen, but it it unlikely that any substantial groups will choose anything far from the most efficient methods available. Solar collection and mining will become an immediate order of business, because life uses recources and space has immense resources in very specific places - how these occur will will likely resemble modifications of existing methods, at first. The environments available in space are harsh, but in a way that technologies are suited to adapt to - vaccuum, radiation, and extremes of temperature - and for technology to adapt to support life to fill gaps where technology is inefficient - replication, organic chemical assembly, self-adaptation. At some point we must ask - what is the line between science and nature, when what we call natural only survives because of science.
At what point is a person a cyborg, or a mech-pilot, or a dude in a suit?
FWIW, it looks like a different episode was accidentally uploaded on Nebula last night. The title is, "Self-Growing Habitats & Space Bases" but the content is "Alien Civilizations - Multi-Species Empires"
If we make and use factories and mech bots in space, we could accomplish quite a bit.
8:40 Remembering the problem derrigables had with wind, how windy is Venus? Their problem was more the difference in wind caused forces between one end and the other overstressing something.
That depends how high up you are, and it's something you can adjust when you're constructing.
Quite a enjoyable episode, Thanks.
I've got a question for fans or Arthur himself. A long time ago when discussing megastructure weapons, you mentioned that you had created a post describing a mega weapon that utilized multiple stars. Do you know what that was called, I have not been able to find the video where you mentioned it. And you never did a stand alone video discussing it.
Another awesome episode thank you sir I really appreciate the content
This episode reminds me of the anime Ergo Proxy. A lot of flash backs about self replicating cities that destroy themselves.
Ointment for my brain. Cheers!
There was a series of books called the Reality Disfunction by Peter F Hamilton that used genetically engineered habitats that had corral as the outer crust. Very cool books.
I was thinking about this earlier this week
bioship whales are my fave. a long way off but i can dream. thanks Isaac! the zero g space cathedral thing that MIt girl talked about on LEX recently was amazing. would love to visit that up, ride the oribtal ring to LEO and worship in the literal heavens! would love to see aerogel manufacturing on the moon soon. mars is dumb. it motivates people i guess but i think free space settlement would sell people on space alot better, especially the orbital ring. most people are anti space because of ideas like settling mars which is just crazy honestly. cool but crazy.
This reminds me of the giant bamboo houses in KSR's Mars Trilogy. They had genetically engineered giant bamboo with something like a 40-foot base diameter. They'd grow forests of it and then cut in doors and windows and stairways to turn it into high-rise living space.
I’m being 100 percent honest I really love how you talk it’s beutiful
For a more near-term conceptualization of this, look up self-replicating lunar factory
15:09 I think you mean mechanical crabs and kilnflower trees
0_0 BULBASAUR!
I think minor genetic engineering would allow humans to live in zero gravity permanently and deal with radiation. Colonizing planets seems like a waste of resources. With some moderately more complicated genetic modification we could probably edit feet and legs into arms and hands. Having four arms and hands seems like it would be useful in zero G.
i’m sure someone or some group of people will do that one day. if they have the ability to do so.
Sounds like there would be lots of fungi to hang out with in the distant colonies of future, good to know.
22:00 This is exactly depicted in the show _Raised By Wolves_ , and similar in the movie _Mother_
rhyming Isaac Arthur isn't real, he can't hurt you
rhyming Isaac Arthur:
Good episode. Makes me feel like some mushrooms.
Those two Brilliant girls at the end lol 💯🔥💯
What a lovely post-scarcity civilization we could have with tech like this.
this reminds me of the "von Neumann-Probes" and one of the best book series "Bobbyverse1-4" :P
I'm imagining possible macro-organisms of sorts where these self assembling colonies could grow and specialize functioning as one giant entity that floats through the universe, replicating and evolving the way simple life forms became complex multicellular life on earth. Given enough time they could even become sort of super intelligences. We'd have essentially created living, breathing gods.
Nice episode! Question: What is a lunar base to do for power in the two week long night? I imagine the first one will be at the pole where you have unending sunlight available. But that might get crowded, fast. What are the chances that the moon has uranium or thorium? Gerald O'Neill proposed giant power station in orbit beaming down microwave power to the Earth - might work in the lunar night? Maybe solar panel at L2 using masers beaming power to the lunar colonies?
They can store thermal energy pretty easily & efficiently in a vacuum. They can also put solar power collectors up on towers to get the same benefits as being on crater rims & polar locations(longer day) & to facilitate power beaming.
Nuclear energy is good & there's just as much nuclear fuel on the moon as there is here. Though since the moon never had a water cycle none of that is very concentrated so probably wouldn't be very economical to extract in the beginning.
Sylphe is a self adaptive neuromimetic disassociation with a focus on doing just this ^_^
Reminds me of the " Titan" series of books by John Varley.
One thing that occurred to me, if a lot of asteroids are powdery a la the target of the Hayabusa mission they would make it ideal for 3-D printing rather than mining, sort particles and then just print directly, greatly simplify the processing the minerals. At least make extraction easier. A hoover with a couple of filters and an inkjet.
oh, the under 50 like club. I'm almost never awake this early.... Help I haven't slept, lol. The idea of 'self-growing habitats' reminds me of an old Star Wars EU book or two....
I was reading a scifi novel about interstellar probes replicating and using 3d printing to build material atom by atom. An interesting problem is how many lifetimes of the universe it would take to build one gram of metal alloy at say 1000 atoms per second.
Listened to it on nebula. I think there’s a mistake that’s been made. On nebula it has this title but when I played the video it was “multi species empires” instead.
Edit: looks like the issue has been fixed on nebula
Ditto
And is it electrostatic field that either repels or expels the regular wouldn't that control it so that you can keep it manageable and out of the way
If anyone here has been reading the X-Men comics for the past year, then this video will be uniquely satisfying. 😉
Mr. Arthur, I don't know if you follow Marvel comics, but I highly suggest you check out the House of X/Powers of X comics that came out in 2019. They borrow heavily from concepts about self-growing habitats, both on Earth and in space.
I got this Notification confused with my todo Notification. Resulting topic suggestion: Space Laundry!
My Theory is that sending a seed module to Venus to grow a floating colony there, by synthesizing all the materials it needs from the atmosphere, is likely the best, if not the only viable way to start developing such infrastructure there.
And because you would be working with chemical synthesis processes rather than soil manipulation, in order to get your materials, there could likely be much less wear and tear occurring to equipment, and thus less need for vital repairs which may need human oversight.
Interesting ideea
Isaac, have you ever read "Dimar: Lost Waters"? It's a mid-sized novel released to the public domain, fully & freely available online: just search for the title. Author is Dee Dreslough.
In that story, the titular native Dimar species are masters of biotech & genetic manipulation: all their technology is grown, living, and ecologically green. They live in huge zero-emission arcology-sized "barryds" that are literally grown from thousands of engineered symbiotic plant species: it's basically a huge living organism that is simultaneously a city-sized tree, farm, telepathic computer for the inhabitants, and a mostly self-contained microcosm. To found a new city, they literally package up a big seed pod and plant it where they want to start.
I think it'd be interesting to hear in your thoughts on various interesting technology concepts in the book, such as the active-cell loaded "Water" they use for rapidly repairing injuries and reshaping living beings on the macro & genetic level. It blurs the line between a Bacta tank and programmable matter.
8:50 Have to overcome the surface volume problem when it's very small.
One part of establishing an outpost on the moon that I have not seen is whether or not people will complain about "that eyesore" ruining the moon's aesthetics. There have been some ugly structures built throughout history but you could often get around that by moving away. If you plonk an early industrial outpost on the Earth-facing side I can already hear the complaints and terrible poetry about man's hubris and spreading corruption over nature's beauty. As with a lot of things, most people are happy to have the benefits so long as it isn't "in my backyard", but this will be there every time you look up.
Obviously, I'm for progress and the future and would love to see orbital rings and infrastructure develop, preferably before I die, I just think that perhaps these issues might be considered before the second coming of brutalism or some megacorp slaps their logo on it.
An orbital ring that could propel humans to the farthest reaches of the solar system? Not in my backyard!
so cool
Have you heard of concrete cloth????
Semi-perminate structures that is filled with air and the soaked with Water. This is a material that can be used for getting started.
Peter F Hamilton ~ Night's Dawn Trilogy.
2:30 Also Botney Bay Australia convicts?