A "Living" Vehicle? Possible?

I have the article attached below that is about living robots powered by muscle. Four things catch my attention that leads to a question:

Now my question is, would it be possible to build some sort of "living" car, aircraft, or other vehicle that runs like an organic body does? I mean you can literally say you have 200 horsepower in this thing. While it may sound far-fetched, would it be possible to have smaller means of transportation run like that? Just slide in and turn your "cell contracting" key and all of a sudden your heart engine starts pumping and off you go?

- N

-------------------

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4181197.stm

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

No external power source?
So is there an internal power source?
Does it require fuel/food in the form of an enzyme or some such thing?
Something has to power it, right?

The cells mulitply?
Something smells a little fishy.
I think there is something missing in this information.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

The muscle cells would require the input of glucose directly to the cell membrane. Also, they would have to be kept in a regulated, wet environment, to prevent dessication.

I don't doubt the posibilities, though central control of the cell to produce *useful* work, as well as the stiff requirements to avoid early cell death would put this advance years from showing up in a marketable application.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

the muscle tissue idea sounds like pseudoelectric (however you spell that...) fibers. When electricity is applied to the fibers, they contract, making them act like muscles, only without the need for nutrients and glucose. Raw power, that's it.

 

It could be done with rapid prototyping technology, depositing either muscle cells or leaving nutrient pathways like blood vessels layer by layer, but you would need a very large scale-up of these devices to make that much power. Why not grow blocks of electric eel muscles, and connect these to your electric motor?

 

The whole living technology thing would be interesting if developed.

Living homes,cars,planes,and living artificial hearts.
Even living space ships that are like huge plants that get there energy from the sun and produce "fruit" to eat would in theory be possible.

 

Ah! You have almost figured out what those intelligent microbes that live in our gut were after when they engineered us.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Wouldn't it be something if when living space ships where made they became sentient and we were the equivalent of the microbes?

But of course unlike the microbes we could communicate with are ship.

 

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

What! Don't yours talk to you? Where else would those voices be coming from?

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

The living ship idea is reminiscent of the craft in Farscape.

 

Do you even want a living airplane? You are on a transatlantic flight and your plane and one other start mating in midair. Living things have moods, needs, and can die even if they are only living cells. Its hard to just disassemble a living thing, put it in storage, nd pull it out at a later date.

 

Why not just ride a horse?

 

A horse is a fairly good example of a creature that is similar to a biological machine in that it used to be used like a car in the olden days and it is also intelegent.

But a horse of course can't be a plane

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

This is great news for designing small nanobots. Could this muscle power manipulate individual atoms?

How about trying to duplicate the molecular turbine of a bacterial flagellum? Its like a muscle, but rotary, more adaptable to existing transporation technology.

 

One of my favorite SciFi shows ever was Babylon 5. In there, there was a race called the Vorlons who were supposedly millions of years more advanced than even the humans were there (and humans in Babylon 5 had mastered interstellar travel). The Vorlon's ships were compeltely organic and and were supposed to have the intelligence of a very well trained Earth dog. The ship was connected to one and only one master whom it served til its master died (which, since the Vorlons were no longer corporeal didn't happen too often). If its master did die, it "mourned" for a period before diving into the star of the Vorlon's homeworld.

I always loved the concepts of these ships, they were intelligent, organic and because of that any damage they took was quickly fixed (as they had obviously masterd perfect organic healing). I hope we could someday reach that point.

-AntonK