Super-habitats

Robert,

Not quite, Im looking at things that can happen in the near term not
hundreds of years from now, we are now starting to be able to manipulate
genes, a mix of regular engineering and bio-engineering could build these
things soon, now that may be hundreds of years away but I would not be
surprised if it was just decades away. Today, we have clover that changes
colour in the presence of land mines (still not perfect which is why we have
not seen it in the field), have plants that suck up toxic metals, rabbits
that glow in the dark (okay, dont see how it would build an orbital habitat
but it is fun to look at), have modified round worms (good old C.Eglans)
that lives 3 times longer than its normal cousins and so on and so on. None
of these will put us in space but Faradays saltwater battery, magnets and
coil of copper wire is a long way from a modern power generation station,
take a look at a photo of the first transistor, its a big as my hand but I
am typing this on a computer with hundreds of millions of transistors on a
sliver of silicon about the size of my thumbnail, on the other side of the
room from me is a plasma TV that is getting its signal from a satellite
hanging in space above me, it doesnt look anything like the mechanically
scanning TV that John Logie Baird was playing with and do you think that
Edison would recognise my cell phone? How long did it take to go from the
beginnings of these things to where we are now? Nobody can say how long it
will take for a technology to mature or the direction it will go but based
on past performance, bio-tech is about to boom and when it does, watch out.

I do not think the first habitat will be largely biological but the second
or the third (and the first with a refit) will have a lot of organic and
semi-organic parts. Today you can have a new bladder grown, they put a
degradable scaffold in place and seed it with cells, bath in nutrients and
soon, your very own new bladder (so far a dog has been done but I saw
something the other day talking about people but missed most of it sorry).
There is a lot still to be done but it will happen and when it does, the
world will change and change more than it did with the electronics
revolution. I think it will be a while before we plant a seed and grow a
house but not far away from being able to use dry-wall grown in a vat and
carpet my floors with modified spider silk that will not stain and will not
wear out (okay, they will change the genes to stop it from not wearing out).

Darren

i can see part of the problem. your looking at things that can be
built hundreds of years from now (most likely), while im looking at
the very near future. Both views are acceptable.

your plan does look like something that might happen once we have
much better science and we get religion out of the way.