Talk:Bioship

Square-cube rule
What "square-cure rule" is this article alluding to? It's not Kleiber's law, nor any of the other allometric laws currently covered in Wikipedia. Uncle G 01:12, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * My guess would be the mass/surface relationship described in Square-cube law. --Alvestrand 05:14, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I think his description and resulting critique of the 'bioship' concept may be off somewhat. The article implies the ships are completely organic and if that was the case, I would tend to agree. My understanding is all the BIO ships in B5 verse are quasi-organic. An important distinction. A hybrid mechancial\Bio Vessel that incorporates the strengths of both extremely advanced sythetic as well as organic techniques. Power plants,\drive systems and weapons systems for example would be impossible to 'bio'. Organic\Synthetic hull yes, life support systems-yes, even computers could in principle, be organically based. His square cube rule I believe refers to a principle in biology(whoes exact name escapes me atm) where the larger a organism becomes, the greater its heat loss and caloric intake needed to support itself rises exponentially. The same principle is used to explain why giant mutant spiders and ants(a staple in attack of the giant xxx movies) or the 50foot woman(!) would not be able to support there own weight, much less survive. The way he describes it however, it appears he thinks B5's bioships are 100% or nearly organic, which I believe to be in error. A current, tho primitive example would be the Cylon raiders in the re-imagined BSG series(2003) However some series\authors posit organic ships that are in effect, space-fareing lifeforms in there own right are opposed to technilogical artifacts. In that case I would aggree that sort of bio-ship is less plausible. Since we are not even 100% sure at this point if anything organic CAN survive in outerspace, organic molecules, yes, but I am not sure if we have even tested if something as basic as a cell can survive in space, much less a complete organism. Since Shadow Battlecrabs and Vorlon Cruisers etc do not fall into this catergory, subjecting them to mass\surface rule or simply calling them handwavium is pre-mature imo.


 * Does the Square-cube-rule apply in a zero gravity vacum?


 * According to the article yes, it is a gravity problem. But EV: Nova's bioships don't have this problem, as the organic hulls are grown over conventional superstructures.  Cite, text from the game: http://evn.wikia.com/wiki/Arachnid 207.159.173.36 (talk) 14:40, 15 November 2010 (UTC)


 * As I understood it, a lot of the bioships in fiction weren't completely biological, instead being

(eg cylon raider)
 * an artificial hull with organic systems grown inside it to control and maintain it
 * an organic hull grown around an artificial skeleton (Bio destroyer from B5)


 * making them more cyborg ships than bio ships


 * perfectblue 13:02, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Rampant speculation
...And some of it makes no sense, like this:
 * In real-life terms, the purely organic bioship is rather an unrealistic design, as no known living substance has the necessary strength to withstand the stresses of combat and acceleration in space.

Um, isn't low acceleration possible in space? And what sort of combat are we talking about? An adaptable, self-sealing organism with redundant organs might survive many forms of space combat better than an inert metal can. If you want to invoke "real-life" terms, define what terms you mean!

Noclevername 01:57, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Whether this is just me thinking, but surely since organisms can survive in deep pressure underwater, why can't they endure space travel? UltimateNagash 11:24, 7 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I removed it, and two other similar sentences. --Planetary 06:40, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Combine addition
I added the Combine in the video games section, though they aren't really spaceships like the other examples, but they are certainly biomechanical. Are they appropriate in this article? --Planetary 06:51, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:B5 shadows.jpg
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BetacommandBot (talk) 06:24, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Alien Derelict Reference
Somebody added a reference for my article on the Derelict. Please bottom reference the article correctly, using my name and the date of retrieval, or I'll remove the reference. Galidakis (talk) 15:59, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Hello, you missed one
I'm sure the Darkstar One from the game of the same name is a bioship, at least to a degree. It is also questionable whether Flood Growth Pods really are bioships. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.2.14.58 (talk) 02:08, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang was published in 1969, qualifies as an early example of sentient starship. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CEE1:B180:BD3F:DADB:1F02:36E3 (talk) 20:23, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

While we're adding examples, Moya from the TV show Farscape was a synthetically augmented bioship: https://farscape.fandom.com/wiki/Moya — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.63.251.33 (talk) 01:26, 26 August 2019 (UTC)