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?
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LignoSat
(although that's magnolia wood, not bamboo)
If you haven't read the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons, go read it. It's worth it.
https://hyperioncantos.fandom.com/wiki/Ousters
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Web_Between_the_Worlds
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Integral_Trees
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.