DARPA Wants Your Ideas for ‘Large Bio-Mechanical Space Structures’

Hey so, random question, but do you have any ideas for large-scale, novel biomechanical structures that can be grown in microgravity that you’ve been sitting on? Just asking on behalf of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which put out a Request for Information (RFI) this week seeking public input on its plan to create “large bio-mechanical space structures.” DARPA, which regularly dabbles in trying to turn science fiction into science, says that it is interested in exploring ways to “grow” biological structures of “unprecedented size”— up to 500 meters in length or larger—that could be used to build infrastructure in space. Per the agency’s RFI, it’s hoping to develop structures that would “position biology as a complementary component of the in-space assembly infrastructure,” which certainly sounds ambitious! In order to get your gears turning (I believe brain gears would count as a bio-mechanical structure), DARPA did offer a couple of ideas of what it has in m ... Read full article.