From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Aug 21 2002 - 09:13:46 MDT
On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Brian D Williams, responding to my comments
on growing beams wrote:
> If you have access to the sea you can do this even easier, by
> bioaccretion.
>
> Sinply create a wire mesh form of what you want to make (chicken
> wire works) attach an electrical source (windpower/solar works) and
> immerse it in seawater, it will "grow" your form just as sealife
> does.
Yes Brian, but the problems with most materials constucted by
oceanic life are the slow cell division time of eukaryotic
cells (~24 hours) and the lack of nutrients (one depends
on ocean currents).
The approach I would like to take is to build things based on
bacteria because the replication time can be < 20 minutes so
you can build your structures much faster. It shouldn't be
particularly difficult to add the biomineralization programs
of diatoms or abalone to bacteria. You have to realize what
humans are good at compared with nature -- mass transfer.
So humans can construct large slurry pipelines or truck
convoys to provide the necessary materials the bacteria
need (other than those that can be obtained directly from
the atmosphere). The combination of faster replication time
and increased essential element availability allows one to
grow things much faster than "natural" systems do.
Robert
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