Hilariously obvious that someone's pet project got tacked on there at the end. Kilometer wide structures please - or alternatively can you make us a tube of bio glue to fix punctures?
I'm here to welcome the era of bamboo based spaceships
There's a little one in orbit right now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LignoSat
(although that's magnolia wood, not bamboo)
Woah, a wooden satellite, that's awesome! Somehow that feels more like a uniquely Earthly thing out there in space.
Its also uniquely Japanese. From the wikipedia article:
> The satellite was assembled through a traditional Japanese crafts technique without screws or glue.
I for one am prepared for our evolution into the Ousters.
If you haven't read the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons, go read it. It's worth it.
I loved how diverse those back stories of each characters were. A bit of cyberpunk, a bit of politics, interesting concept of time reversal.
I immediately thought of the Templar’s tree ships. Clearly time for a re-read!
Whoever is doing DARPA’s PR and, apparently GR, since I guess federal agencies have to do that now, deserves a raise.
EP: Elon Pandering, an essential function for any agency these days.
LOL as much as I disagree with Elon's current stint in government, this is probably among the most tame projects in DARPA's portfolio.
Most tame and most not-classified.
tame as seaweed wrapped around your ankles in shallow water, i might say.
doesn't sound very efficient to me
what is GR?
Guessing government relations, similar to PR being public relations.
Yup. Lobbyists are outside your org. GR coördinates their messaging.
Two dots over a letter can be one of three types:
- umlaut
- diaeresis
- trema
A diaeresis signals you pronounce the vowel separately, a trema signals the pronunciation of the previous vowel (e.g. in the French ambiguë), an umlaut changes the sound of the vowel ( the German a sounds a bit like the English a in bat, but ä sounds like the English e in bed).
In this instance the double dot is a diaeresis.
https://thelanguagecloset.com/2023/05/27/diaresis-trema-umla...
The formal name for it is diaeresis [0]. The New Yorker is famous for being a high-profile publication that enforces its usage.
This is a theme in "The Web Between the Worlds" [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Web_Between_the_Worlds
Wow, there's some serious zeitgeist going on there:
This novel was published almost simultaneously with The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke. Through an amazing coincidence the two novels contained many similarities. Both protagonists are engineers who have built the world's longest bridge using a machine named the "Spider", both of whom are hired to build a space elevator, and both engineers modify their Spiders to produce a crystalline fiber.
It's like the simultaneous invention of calculus. People are conduits for independently-living ideas.
The idea of spider webs in space was explored long before, in the second century AD, by Lucian of Samosata in his _Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα_ or "True Stories." Spiders run webs from the sun (land of the Heliots) and the moon (the Selenites) so that a vast space battle can be waged on a plain between them.
I initially downvoted this because it sounded ludicrous and couldn't be true, but indeed, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_True_Story
Always fun to see stuff written almost 2 thousand years ago about life on other planets.
If you have spent time in academia, this concept is ever present.
Somehow all the academics in a particular field all over the world just happen to agree on a narrow set of ideas to explore next.
Most of science happens like this, yes even the Newtons and Einsteins of the world explored ideas in this narrow frontier of next ideas. There used to be exceptions in the distant past but modern science does not tolerate exceptions.
When you say "exceptions" I can't tell if you mean to be hinting toward something like new-agey crystals, or something more like DARPA bio structures, or something else entirely. What is the frontier of unexplored knowledge that is forbidden by academia?
I can't remember the source (xkcd?) that drew any individual scientist's contribution as a tiny little bump on the edge of a huge circle.
It's not talked about it much outside of research groups, but for any field, there is a small number of people who are currently pushing the boundaries, and they all read each other's papers and have a good idea of what the next question to ask is. It can often be a race to engineer an experiment that convinces the reviewers that your article should be published first. It's a sort of cooperation/competition that moves the field forward faster. These areas often move so fast that nobody even bothers to write down the current problems, it's just sort of talked about in person.
Put another way, the successful discoverers are the ones looking for their keys at the end of the streetlight: "Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that's where the light is. It has no other choice." (Chomsky). Few if anybody looking where there is no light discovers anything (even if it's sitting there in the dark), or at least, nobody believes them unless they provide significant evidence (like building a new lamp)
Yes- after many years of being a theory guy I actually did a 180 and started building my own scientific instruments, because the acquisition cost of a research microscope is so high. This allows me to experiment quickly with new ML algorithms, and I've greatly increased my respect for the people who toil to make the hardware for next-generation discovery science.
That's a really nice way to visualize how modern human knowledge is extended through scientific efforts. Thanks for sharing! (thanks also to the GP who introduced the concept)
new to me. thanks!
this. Even something as singular as the prediction of the Higgs boson was ~simultaneously reached by different groups(!) of people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_PRL_symmetry_breaking_pap...
I don't see it as that singular. Either
(1) hep-th had too many people chasing too few problems back then, or
(2) "scalar field with a mexican hat potential" is one of the simplest field theories you can write though it inspires all sorts of ideas like the Higgs Mechanism, Inflation, etc.
Calculus I can understand, but the kind of coincidence GP describes is much harder to explain.
"A clear case of plagiarism? No — merely an idea whose time has come." - Clarke
This reminds me of Larry Niven's Integral Trees. Very cool!
Can we / will be ever be able to grow bioengineered coral at an accelerated rate with a desired growth structure/direction in space?
Accelerated rate with equivalent integrity probably requires some engineering tricks nature hasn't "figured out" yet. Given nature has had a few billion years of massively parallel processing of the original genetic algorithm, it's unlikely. Especially considering ASI is a pipe dream. Also, sea creatures use buoyancy to their advantage.
Maybe we will find other structure development systems from combining existing pieces of biologic systems. But that's also unlikely, because biologic systems are so incredibly entangled (to use a software concurrency/complexity term).
That said, it is an awesome research direction, just for the novel construction techniques potential.
From last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43185769
We kind of have microgravity on Earth under water, which provides apparent reduced weight due to buoyancy. Coral reefs and all that.
Underground root/rhizome structures are also bio structures existing in a kind of microgravity since they are firmly supported by the surrounding soil they are packed into.
Yeah, but getting these structures into space is 99% of the challenge. Best to build them there to begin with.
Wonder if anyone is looking into splicing those spider silk genes into a fungus. Maybe the mycelium could gain enough tensile strength to hold pressure? Maybe exude the proteins and form strong tubes around itself? Fungal structures are already surprisingly light for how strong they are.
What I don't understand about the proposal is that every c-c bond the fungus could make still has to be shipped from earth.
Might it not be possible to "harvest" carbon from sources on e.g. the moon [1], thereby requiring less effort to launch those resources into orbit? Feel free to point out if I'm talking (thinking) nonsense here...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_resources#Carbon_and_nit...
Feedsto ck is the moon...its literally resources we don't have to transport into space if we use the moon.
That's not quite how gravity wells work.
Reminded me of coral based living spaceships of The Night's Dawn trilogy by Peter Hamilton.
serious question - how do you water it?
Would hemp be viable in this case?
What will make the hemp?
What would be feed stock for this?
Either human blood or potatoes, the two options.
If it's complimentary, doesn't that mean it's free? Why do they need a contract then?
This is the sort of shit that gets you glassed by the watchers
the flood!
Between this and the drone-swarm command experiment from yesterday, seems like whoever is heading DARPA mains Zerg in StarCraft.
Might also have something to do with the war in Ukraine completely changing our understanding of modern warfare. Defense projects take decades to design and build and now out doctrine is somewhat impacted by how effective drones are proving to be.
> the war in Ukraine completely changing our understanding of modern warfare
Am I crazy to think that the war in Ukraine hasn't changed my understanding of modern warfare?
Maybe I'm in the wrong business.
Do you discount the impact of drones, or did you put a lot of value in them before the war and still do? I find the tactics around using expendable troops to attrit expensive troops a bit humbling too.
I think this is a little pedantic or maybe I'm just being too ambiguous lol. I'll try to make my thoughts more clear as it's likely the latter.
You're absolutely right that drones have been used for awhile, but that has mainly been for reconnaissance and some extremely expensive predator drones. The idea of having thousands of small consumer grade drones mass produced cheaply to terrorize a much larger army by dropping grenades on soldiers and live streaming it on the internet is definitely a new development. There are drone swarms covering our major military ships as well and it's unknown whether it's our own military doing it as part of a black ops program (I assume it's possible, but highly unlikely) or a hostile foreign power doing recon. Russian tanks are also getting dissected by RPGs at an unexpected rate. The Ukrainians took out major Russian warships by distracting the ship with drones and then ramming it with a jet ski torpedo.
Modern militaries are scrambling to find new technology and strategies for how to handle these new capabilities.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Interesting read. If you wrote a more detailed piece with more speculation, I'd love to read it.
Could you clarify what this means? Is this some inside HackerNews reference I'm unaware of?
Starcraft is a real-time strategy game, and Zerg is one of three factions you can play in the game. Zerg units are individually weak but cheap compared to the other factions, so Zerg players typically compose swarms of disposable units when staging and conducting attacks. It’s also quicker to make large swarms, since there isn’t a sequential build queue for Zerg unit construction. It makes for a pretty interesting switch in mindset compared to the other sides, where there is much more emphasis on preserving one’s units. Some of the more obnoxious strategies, like the Zerg rush, have become memes among gamers.
>Zerg units are individually weak but cheap compared to the other factions
And fast. So. fucking. fast.
I hate playing against Zerg.
This is also apt:
The term "Zerg Rush", or "zerging", is now commonly used to describe sacrificing economic development in favor of using many cheap, yet weak units to overwhelm an enemy by attrition or sheer numbers.
— Wikipedia
It's a StarCraft reference.
https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Zerg
"The Zerg Swarm is a terrifying and ruthless amalgamation of biologically advanced, arthropodal aliens. [...] They are named "the Swarm" per their ability to rapidly create strains, and the relentless assaults they employ to overwhelm their foes."
This is one of the three main factions in StarCraft. Think hiveminds and bugs.
Zerg is a playable race in the game Starcraft. They are bio units where everything you build is biological.
could you link the drone swarm command article?
Drone swarm is tos just sayin.
Don't forget swarm hosts ;)
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Any department that is responsible for paying Elon Musk has a better chance than others that stand in his way. USAID was investigating musk and CFPB were in the way of his X Pay nonsense. He gets a lot of money from the DoD so if anything they will have their budget increased.