Bioship Designs

[AlexanderSen]

Lately, after reading a post by Jester85, I have been inspired by the ideas of Bio-tech.
I have limited resources because I am in the hospital right now but I made do with what I got and I did some pen/ink conceptual drawings. The designs are of two bioships which carry passengers. Sort of an ocean-liner of sorts.

One has a whale shark mouth like mouth which functions similar to a jet intake. It also has side pockets openings which serve as door/entrances and are covered in slimey residue which seals the openings shut.

The octopus like one has a movable tunnel entrance in the back which serves as a gangway connector like that od airports. While the tentacles serve as mooring lines.

I don't have access to Photoshop here so I am limited in capacity. The pics are only B&W drawings, but I'll see if I can't get my markers out and color them when I have some time.

 

[ShotokanXL]

Cool designs. I particularly like the opctopus one. Organic technology is a great concept. Babylon 5 dabbled with it (the Vorlons and Shadows used organic ships, if memory serves) and it was done particularly well in the reimagined BSG - to the point where the lines are really blurred.

Again, cool stuff. Be great to see more

 

[ShotokanXL]

Cool designs. I particularly like the opctopus one. Organic technology is a great concept. Babylon 5 dabbled with it (the Vorlons and Shadows used organic ships, if memory serves) and it was done particularly well in the reimagined BSG - to the point where the lines are really blurred.

Again, cool stuff. Be great to see more

 

[Prescott Fry]

Do either of you create illustrations for writing?

 

[ShotokanXL]

Do either of you create illustrations for writing?

Just stuff based on my own work. Nothing professional.

 

[AlexanderSen]

Hi! I have been away doing other things for a while, but recently I have been getting back into digital painting and photoshop. Here is an new work based upon the concept of bioships. It's probably for a dense gaseous or water planet. I also played with a version for space that would use ramjets - but would those two puny intakes in the front of the craft be able to collect enough fuel? It probably would need a large scoop funnel in the front. I put in some reference to an old classic sentient being that is capable of driving himself, as well as a mish-mash of other sci fi ref. Feel free to leave comments and critiques. Any constructive criticism would be appreciated!

 

[Droflet]

Nice.

 

[AlexanderSen]

I have been at it again, trying to develop an interesting, but believable bio-ship(s), and it has been quite a challenge. I am not totally happy with the piece, but I see it as a work in progress, and a continuation of my design from my previous works. So, here's my progress so far: I liked the idea of a Space Whale Cruise ship - whales with their big slow graceful movements, and cruises, the relaxing atmosphere of long exotic tours. The two ideas just seem to fit together naturally.

I thought the creature should be reminiscent of a whale, yet not exactly look like one. Playing with the design; I debated on where to give it a vertical fin, like a fish which is better for side to side movement, or to give it a horizontal tail like a whale/mammal which has better up and down movement. I even had played with a design with a propeller and a rudder, but then I thought to myself how would this work? An organic ship with a propeller would need to have parts which are not permanently joined or connected in a way so continuous rotation would be possible, which I wonder if it is even possible for an organic animal due to the nature of organic growth. I don`t know of any animal that has a rotation of over 360 degrees in their joints. Of course I guess it could be something like a cyborg... A mix of bio-tech with machine-tech, but then it would no longer be a bio-ship...
In the end I decided to give it extra fins, so it doesn't look like an exact whale, but still keep the whale tail and whale face to have some recognizable features of whales for the viewer to relate to.

Right now, I feel like the ship should be more colorful, I will probably do another version with more a radiant myriad of colors for more of a festive feel.

 

[AlexanderSen]

I suddenly realized our arms and legs are mounted on a pivoting ball joint which can spin infinitely in one direction. lol

 

[AlexanderSen]

Is there any way to edit old posts? I thought it would be in poor taste to post 3 times consecutively - it kinda feels like I am spamming posts... But anyhow, here are some more Bio-ship Designs. I felt that my last Space Whale Cruise Ship design looked a little too mechanical, and too much like a cruise ship, and not organic enough. So, I went back to doing some pen and ink drawings and came up with these designs. I feel they are more in the right direction. Any constructive criticism/feedback would be appreciated!

 

[ErikB]

I'm designing a more insect like vessel that is not so much biological as bio inspired design. Insects being a base model for what my aliens consider "organic" thinking and design.

 

[ErikB]

 

[AlexanderSen]

Hi, after a hiatus I am back with more bioship stuff.

ErikB, that's an interesting design you have there. So, what is your bioship's intended use? Warfare? Construction? Cargo? Or something else? It's looks kind of aggressive with all its sharp, pointy bits, but there are no visible weapons I can see besides maybe, its claw-like appendages.

To further develop your design you can ask yourself, “How would you construct/create/grow these type of ship and why would someone choose your bioship over an mechanical one?”

In my world (after doing some research), where FTL(Faster Than Light) travel has not been realized yet, I envision that there are several different reasons for using bioships over mechanized vehicles:

1) Bioships are able to heal and can repair their damaged systems on their own which is a big plus. While, mechanized vehicles, though they can get replacement parts, actually are a logistical nightmare/hell to repair. The parts themselves first need to be manufactured at a factory back on your home planet and then sent to the broken down vehicle light years away, without FTL it is far easier to have a unit who only needs food, or can get resources from its current environment around it to heal and rebuild itself. Of course, you can carry spare mechanized parts on your ship, but how many parts can you really carry? Surely not all the parts, for that would weigh you down substantially. Don't forget that the cost of sending things into space costs heap loads of money and resources (currently ~$10,000US per pound IRL from what I remember).

Also a part of my inspiration of these ideas came from watching a documentary on WW2 which talked about how the famous German Tanks, such as the Panther and Tiger, suffered from such a logistical problem. The Tiger and Panthers tanks, that were highly engineered were very effective in their roles, but being highly engineered they had a down fall - it made them much harder to repair, as it required specific highly manufactured parts that were hard to get in the battlefield that made the tanks more of a liability and resource sink than a effective solution to the war effort. Many of the vehicles broke down and were just discarded because as it was too hard to fix or to do field repairs on. Costly to manufacture, these expensive machines were left and abandoned making it a great waste of resources. I believe this is one of the contributing factors that lead to the outcome of the war (luckily for us Allies!). Thus having a simple robust unit that can be repaired easily or healed(maintained) is an important factor in the effort to colonize new worlds and travel in space. Imagine how hard it is to send a specific replacement part light years away from you to where your broken vehicle is. Sure, you can order another part, but it might take 300 years before the part to even arrive!

2) Bioships can grow, this is like healing, but different in that it means you can start with a smaller ship which weighs a lot less, and is a lot easier for it to reach critical velocity to escape the planets orbit with the lower payload size it also allows for much less front end investment, thus, initially needing to send less supplies into space the ships are more disposable. Also as they grow they can evolve and adapt becoming more viable in their roles as opposed to becoming outdated due to changes in its environment.

3) Bioships are able to live off the land/environment, and again reinforcing the point of carry less resources on board, and having a more robust unit. Being able to graze off the environment allows for less need for infrastructure such as fuel stations and roads.

I have been working on a new piece based upon the new concepts I have stated in this post. In it is the larger generational colony ships as opposed to my earlier designs of smaller vehicles that used mainly as passenger transports/ferries. These colony ships have life spans in the hundred and thousand of Earth years, going far beyond the lifespan of humans. These giant monoliths which bond with the handlers, are ships that are passed down from one generation to the next. The secrets of nurturing the ship and maintaining the bond is a secret rite to connect it to the host/pilot to the ship. The ship is merged with a handler who serves the rest of their live as a host bonded to the ship, until the host passes away and is handed down to the next host

I also took my favorite designs from my previous posts and designs and added some textures to give them a more rendered feel.

 

[ErikB]

Warfare and exploration.

I would venture to say that having obvious weapon systems such as turrets to guns and cannons would represent a more primitive technology level. That beings advanced enough would incorporate weapons that went beyond standard offense and defense devices. Weapons using energy, magnetic fields, chemical fields, radiation, and elements that we as yet lack in our own periodic table.

But these are loose designs that are not organic in nature, rather imitating organic form. There is an interesting annotation in the non fiction book "The Secret Lives of Plants" discussing metal have a memory that is contained molecularly in the various types of metal. But not cognisance of course.

By the same token it is also not shape memory in which metals may return to a primary form if bent from that form. It was an interesting passage which might be something akin to a pathway for fusing inorganic with organic materials. A sort of bio to non biological reception and conductivity of energy.

This making your living bioship a far more scientifically viable idea than perhaps otherwise believed.

 

[SilentRoamer]

1) Bioships are able to heal and can repair their damaged systems on their own which is a big plus. While, mechanized vehicles, though they can get replacement parts, actually are a logistical nightmare/hell to repair. The parts themselves first need to be manufactured at a factory back on your home planet and then sent to the broken down vehicle light years away, without FTL it is far easier to have a unit who only needs food, or can get resources from its current environment around it to heal and rebuild itself. Of course, you can carry spare mechanized parts on your ship, but how many parts can you really carry? Surely not all the parts, for that would weigh you down substantially. Don't forget that the cost of sending things into space costs heap loads of money and resources (currently ~$10,000US per pound IRL from what I remember).

Hey there, was just reading through your posts and wanted to point something out

It's very unlikely you would ever have Ship Repair bays at the bottom of a gravity well. As you say it would be far too expensive in terms of fuel but given we have bioships we can assume a better ratio. Best place for Shipyards would be in hollowed out asteroids somewhere quiet on the belt or even in standard orbital platforms although they wouldn't carry the raw resources of asteroids.

I would probably develop bioships that grow in space using solar energies or grow in Interstellar Nurseries consuming the gases their and they would only function outside of a gravity well and outside of an atmosphere. Probably use some sore of solar based propulsion system with a huge wingspan hundreds of KM across (imagine a huge spiders web with a central control area) which would house the brain and main processing area, the edges of the "web" would house a very accurate and finely tuned antenna with a broadcast capability.

To make it interesting in my imagination these creatures aren't controlled by humans we can just use regular ships to get "on board" and they piggyback us across Intersolar space whilst travelling around (whatever reasons they travel around and any higher form of language are completely opaque to humans, much like ants in a colony looking up as a human strides across their home).

Just some thoughts

 

[AlexanderSen]

SilentRoamer, I did some more designs using your suggestions. Well, sort of anyways. The first one is a side shot of a giant web like sail in the front. The yellow green on this ship is more an plant like design where the ship just uses the light as a sail and energy collector.

While the second one (red and blue) has a has sails appendages spreading out from the center core, but the sails are more reminiscent of boat sails or tentacles with wind pockets as I call them - I don't know how realistic this is, but it was cool, so...

I am also working on another couple designs which are more on long the lines of what you have suggested with the web solar sail. I will post them once they are ready.

 

[AlexanderSen]

Here is another design, it mashes the web sail idea with a translucent body. There are little antennas around the outside of the ship, and a jellyfish-brain like structure in the middle of the giant sail.

 

[SilentRoamer]

That's really cool.

What application are you using to draw/design these?

 

[AlexanderSen]

Thanks~! I use Photoshop mostly. I am learning digital painting online and taking online courses in my spare time from websites like Ctrl Paint, CDW Studios, and SVS(Society of Visual Storytelling). I am also trying to get more into 3D programs, but I haven't got very far into it. I guess I am a creature of habit...

 

[AlexanderSen]

Lately, I have been pondering on Bioships and their relationship / role in an ecosystem.

The pursuit and refinement of Biotech with the human species had begun a long time ago, as early as least 2000-6000 years ago, with the domestication of animals and farming with such things as corn, can be considered as early forms and precursors to GMOs and genetic engineering. Humans used processes such as artificial selection on species/organisms such as corn corps, dog (breeding), and the domestication of animals such as cows. They could be considered the father to the process of genetic modding. In the future, growing bioships by methods such as selective breeding and gene-splicing to create/grow/build bio-vehicles for transportation and bio-machines for resource processing and commercial industry are a plausible reality.

In regards to Scifi, other possible species which might have mastered biotech to a competent degree, I imagine would also have extensive knowledge of: genes and organic chemistry; understanding of simple celled organisms to complex animals; and some sort of understanding of ecosystems, environmental sciences(such as terraforming). I see Bioships not only as stand alone entity, but part of a Terraforming / colonization process of other planets. Cars, to function efficiently, need infrastructure with things such as roads, gas stations, and mechanics/service shops. But if we use horses, an more organic comparison closer to bioships, are living organisms which tend to need less infrastructure as they draw upon the natural environment to acquire food/fuel for what they need.

For bioships to be effective, I feel that there still is a need to develop a process of developing a favorable environment for bioships, even though needing less than machines, still need some sort of environmental adaptation(terraforming) to function effectively in. This process begins with observing and analyzing current ecosystems and environments to create and evolve native organisms into malleable/useful bio-matter which can be harvested and molded and grown into bioships from preexisting ecologys(ecologies).

For colonizing foreign planets one of the possible first steps(first wave) is sending inexpensive simple probes/recon/surveying/scout out onto other planets to collect and send data back to the hive source for the second wave of evolution and genetic modding, as well as, carrying with them the basic genetic materials to be used as a catalyst to start a Panspermia event on foreign planets with "Goldilocks" conditions for the biogenesis process. These drones should be fairly self -sufficient and require low energy and a minimum amount of resources to function. Simple in design they would carry with them a simple Genetic sequence code matrix which would react to and hatch/spawn in the right conditions. The second wave would include building ships from the data acquired by the recon drones and to secure key resources for further development. They could be bringing with them biological DNA seeds, form their home world, with a 'Shotgun method' where millions of inexpensive drones are fired onto a planet carrying with them a core sample of the primal seeds and DNA material from their home planet gives it a good chance to trigger a Panspermia event.

These are some of the Drones I envisioned would be used for the First Wave of Infesting and Terraforming.