http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181031-how-fungus-and-sweat-could-transform-martian-exploration
[...] This magic biomaterial is mycelium, the vegetative part of the fungus. If you imagine that mushrooms are the 'fruits' of the fungus, mycelium could be regarded as its roots or stems. It looks like a mass of white thread-like structures, each called hyphae, which crisscross soil and other material in which fungi grows. Collectively, these threads are called mycelium and are the largest part of the fungus.
Mycelium has amazing properties. It is a great recycler, as it feeds off a substrate (like sawdust or agricultural waste) to create more material, and has the potential of almost limitless growth in the right conditions. It can endure more pressure than conventional concrete without breaking, is a known insulator and fire-retardant and could even provide radiation protection on space missions.
On Earth it's currently used to create ceiling panels, leather, packaging materials and building materials, but in outer space it stands out for its architectural potential, says artist and engineer Maurizio Montalti, who has teamed up with Ciokajlo.
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Thursday November 08 2018, @06:33AM
What a great season this was of Star Trek Discovery. Between Tardigrades and Mycelium. I was fully enthralled. When I saw "The Martian," I thought wow, the gut microbiome is really a thing. If you put these things together, you can grow entire buildings out of Mycelium. In all honesty, I think it is a great thing when we can use our stank to engineer star-ships.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Thursday November 08 2018, @07:10AM (14 children)
Of course, the realization that mycellium are their own branch of the tree of life has many interesting implications. One of the most interesting is that the parasitic life-forms we so easily idolize in our video games, and mythology, and search for mind-bending substances, may in fact just be using us as a medium to get to the rest of the universe. Yeah, "man on Mars", but he will have to bring with him the fungi that causes jock-itch, the one that is the source of the Heartbreak of Psisaoris! And did it not occur to us, as humans, that we were being used in a program we have no comprehension of? Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene", only, with mushrooms.
[On a side note, this would explain much of the editorial behavior of the editors on SoylentNews of late. the Mycelium have taken control of the Central Processsing Unit, so as to insure that the SLS never comes to fruition, but the cheaper, and more mycelium friendly "SpaceX" is selected to fly the chosen spores to the Red Planet. For thousands of millennium have they waited. ]
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday November 08 2018, @08:06AM (2 children)
Still a minor something is to be achieved: the availability of "a substrate (like sawdust or agricultural waste)".
Ah, yes, and sweat, let's not forget the sweat! It's clearly spelled in TFT, even when TFS has not even a tiny tangent point to the matter - looks to me as a sign the sweat is unlikely come from S/N editors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday November 08 2018, @10:55AM (1 child)
I'd bet a suitable substrate could be generated from sewage without too much difficulty. Then you can talk seriously about a closed-loop recycling system.
What you really want though, is some way of turning Martian (or Lunar, or wherever) soil / dust / regolith into substrate, thus increasing your available biomass using local raw materials. Then you're really in business. I wonder if it would be as easy as mixing in a measure of dust with sewage-substrate and letting the fungus get to work.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 08 2018, @11:29AM
Mmm... after reducing those oxidants in the regolith [space.com] and keeping the UV out**, it may work.
Hardly self-sustainable, though, when you stop pooing on the roof, it will stop growing - not very much organic mater to degrade on Mars (there are some carbonates in some places [wikipedia.org] and they discovered some chlorobenzene [wikipedia.org] but this is quite far from the level of organics in the Earth soil mushrooms like)
** Keep the UV out of the roof? Like... build a roof over the roof?
Now, why the focus on roof? Because TFA "dreams" on the line of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday November 08 2018, @10:27AM (2 children)
"Nut-Sack Being Torn Asunder" is a rather more-accurate description. There's nothing itchy about it.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @02:52PM (1 child)
Your sig "Google Search for Fuck MDC [google.com]. I get 470,000 hits; and you? "
It's getting worse. I get 537,000.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 09 2018, @04:42AM
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday November 08 2018, @10:31AM
My own idea for terraforming Mars doesn't involve human visits.
Rather, I'd use a rail gun to hurl artillery-shell sized re-entry vehicles full of cow patties on a minimum-energy trajectory to The Red Planet. Keep this up for a few millennia and it would be just like the final scene of Total Recall.
I expect it would be most effective if they all hit in the same general vicinity.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday November 08 2018, @10:32AM
Do Not Let The Sun Go Down Again Before You Have Acquired A Copy Of Kurt Vonnegut's "The Sirens Of Titan".
I personally regard that as Vonnegut's most-tragic work. It puts Slaughterhouse Five completely to shame.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @07:54PM
Sounds like Terence McKenna's stoned ape theory [steemit.com].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 09 2018, @04:52AM (4 children)
On a "side note", the last three or so years of your posting has been as rational as the arguments for SLS. Fortunately, they're not going to cost a few hundred Falcon Heavy launches before we find out that they're awful.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday November 09 2018, @09:06AM (3 children)
Wot? Mon khallow répond à mon commentaire? Il ressemble plus à un champignon. Peut-être qu'il ressent de l'affinité. Mais la réfutation évidente est non, la privatisation ne rapporte que les entrepreneurs, elle ne fait pas progresser la science et l'exploration spatiale.
La réfutation évidente est non! Boire, soylentils!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 09 2018, @12:05PM (2 children)
If that were true, we wouldn't have such things as say, Edison's lab or SpaceX (or billions of people benefiting from such things). So the obvious rebuttal is neither obvious or a rebuttal - sadly, a usual outcome of your musings. Meanwhile I manage to deliver - though the need for delivery was slight.
Please, continue to show us how it's done.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday November 09 2018, @06:52PM (1 child)
Or Tesla or the Apollo missions. Entrepreneur stupide!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 10 2018, @01:44PM
What have the Apollo missions done lately? SpaceX is going to be affecting space development for decades or centuries to come. When Apollo stopped, no one, including the US, sent as much as a space probe to the Moon for almost two decades. In other words, it was worst than nothing in that it inhibited (and continues to inhibit) space development of the Moon.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday November 08 2018, @10:26AM
One of the largest living things in the world is a single mycelium that spans several acres. It's DNA shows that it really is just one organism.
I'd like you to amuse yourselves by contemplating the first humans on Mars being equipped with some of the Loompanics books. My own copy has a coarsely-textured heavy plastic coating all over its cover, which is rather unpleasant to the touch for those who have yet to follow the procedure detailed therein.
And pressure cookers. They'll need lots of pressure cookers. And canning jars.
And cowshit.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Muad'Dave on Thursday November 08 2018, @12:13PM (4 children)
Create leather? Only if they mean feeding mushrooms to cows and other hide animals.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Muad'Dave on Thursday November 08 2018, @12:16PM
PS - This isn't leather [mycoworks.com] - it's maybe a leather-like material.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @12:22PM
search:
mushrooms into leather
Seems this is a real thing, substitute/ersatz leather, made from fungi.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TrentDavey on Thursday November 08 2018, @03:55PM
It's not leather but it does have some eyebrow-raising uses: https://greenbuildingelements.com/2015/04/15/mushroom-based-building-materials-are-here/ [greenbuildingelements.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday November 08 2018, @06:57PM
If you make kombucha there is a mat of fungi and bacteria that grow on top called a "SCOBY". This material, when dried and "tanned" properly forms a leather-like material.
It's an active area of R&D.