Markup View

Author: zarpaulus

Dec 8th 2013 at 1:33:48 PM

Maybe an analysis by application.

[[AC:Spaceships]]
Often {{Living Ship}}s are portrayed as having the advantage of healing themselves or self-replicating.  But in real life regeneration and growth are very slow compared to fabrication and repair of similarly sized things.  The largest organisms on earth, redwood trees and baleen whales, live for centuries because it takes several years for them to grow to full size.  Not to mention that a living ship would be constantly healing from radiation damage and impacts that wouldn't even affect a metal ship.

[[AC:Replacement body parts]]
Presently mechanical replacements are vastly inferior in performance to biological ones, and electrical interfaces to nerve endings degrade over time, the record is currently [[http://www.technologyreview.com/news/522086/an-artificial-hand-with-real-feelings/ 18 months]].  But transplanted organs require immunosuppressant drugs to prevent the body from rejecting them, and it takes more time to gain control of a transplanted or reattached limb than a prosthesis as the nerves have to grow into the limb.  And until we're able to [[CloningBodyParts clone them]] transplants are much more scarce than prostheses.