Ghosts In The Shell
Ghosts In The Shell
Contents
Remember The Smart People
A High Organic Standard
Bionics
Cybernetics & Cyborgs
Mind Over Matter
Gettin’ Beefy Wit It
Feeding The Machine
Our Bodies And Our Minds
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Organic bodies are what we’ve got. If we’re going to space, we’re doing it in meat bodies, one way or the other.
At least for now.
It’s who we are and, personally, we wouldn’t want to change that.
Being human is fun.
Remember The Smart People
Let’s pause before we go further.
While we may not be built for space, science is forging ahead with all sorts of projects that will make it easier to live and work there.
Enhancing the human condition is yet another area where our brightest minds have turned their focus.
A moment, please, to acknowledge the amazing players in the fields of medicine and biology working in these areas.
There are incredibly smart people, alive right now, today, working this very minute, heads down in their labs, engaged upon their research, explorers in their own right, blazing trails toward ways we can become better versions of ourselves.
If we humans are the future (and we are), then it is to these heroes of the human form, perhaps, that we owe the sharpest salute of all.
They’re doing all they can to make sure we, in turn, are able to take these organic, and admittedly frail, bodies to new heights.
Quite literally.
A High Organic Standard
Organics, in and of themselves, don’t necessarily have to be a liability.
Take the incredible tardigrade.
Also called water bears, these tiny beasts are an example of how durable our organics might conceivably become. Unique in their ability to survive in space, tardigrades can live indefinitely in a vacuum, survive heavy doses of radiation, and withstand some of the harshest sunlight.
One incredible anecdote; there was some moss that had been dried out that had been in a museum for over 100 years, and when they moistened it … out crawled tardigrades!
So many cool bits of research on these little dudes.
They’re tiny, about the size of one of the periods in this text, and with the right light can be seen with the naked eye.
Long story short, these are a living example of the highest degree of organic toughness we know.
Hm. Maybe we should become tardigrades.
Cool as that might be (or maybe not), when it comes to making these shells of ours tougher we have two main (realistic) options at this time:
Add artificial enhancement, or
Beef up the organics.
Let’s take a look.
Bionics
We humans aren’t robots. If we were, we could pick out all sorts of modifications for ourselves, from colors to styles, shapes to sizes, functions to capabilities.
Though limited in what we can do, there are still ways to mechanically enhance what we have.
Bionics, a portmanteau (a blend of words) of the words “biology” and “electronics”, is the replacement or enhancement of organs or other body parts with mechanical versions.
The bionics industry has grown along four major areas of application:
Vision
Hearing
Orthopedics (musculoskeletal)
Implants
Implants to date have been designed to augment cardiac and neurological functions.
Note, things like powered exoskeletons, while cool, are more something to be worn than integrated with the existing body.
However, though not actual body augmentation, they’re close enough—and too damn cool—not to take a quick detour to discuss.
Exo-Suits
Also called powered exoskeletons, ‘exo’ meaning external or outside, these units are not robots, in that they’re not autonomous. They’re controlled by the wearer.
Exo-suits provide enhanced strength, greater endurance, and even protection.
The US Military is developing one. Dubbed the Soldier Assistive Bionic Exosuit for Resupply, or SABER (the military has the best acronyms), it’s the product of a collaboration between the U.S. Army and Vanderbilt University.
Slated to be deployed in the field, SABER will aid our men and women in uniform.
What’s the most powerful exoskeleton so far?
The Guardian XO, a robotic full-body suit manufactured by Sarcos Robotics (USA). According to Guinness World Records it allows the operator to lift objects weighing up to 90 kg (200 lb), with the operator bearing only around 5% of that load.
Basically, lifting your cousin Vinny would feel about like picking up 10 pounds.
Future astronauts will likely wear exosuits over their spacesuits, giving them strength-multipliers for moving stuff around on moon and Mars bases. With the lower lunar gravity, such powered suits would make wearers strong like ants. That 200 pounds would become a thousand (more) on the moon, with the same effort.
Will our future garages have one of these in the corner? Maybe one for each member of the family, next to the electric bikes?
Most likely.
More than that, we’re sure to see them in use as part of our exploits in space.
Cybernetics & Cyborgs
As distinct from bionics, cybernetics is typically concerned with automatic control systems, such as the nervous system and brain, or/and mechanical-electrical communication systems, and includes a wide range of systems that aren’t always human dominated.
In other words a “cybernetic” system could have as its prime director a human brain or something else.
Meaning the line can blur, as bionics (above) controlled by interfaces with the user’s brain bleed into the cybernetic arena.
A “cyborg”—another portmanteau, this one of cybernetic and organism—would be a being composed of both organic and artificial systems. The key there being “a being”. A cyborg, in keeping with that cybernetic mandate, could also have as its prime director a human brain, or something artificial.
The thing that makes it a cyborg is that it has combinations of organics and mechanical stuff.
Mind Over Matter
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are a direct communication pathway between the brain’s electrical activity and an external device, most commonly a computer or robotic limb.
These have been developed and are actually in use. In fact they’re being refined every day.
Three main types exist, intended for use where the BCI is either:
Non-invasive (usually tapping externally recorded signals, like an EEG)
Semi-invasive, or
Surgically implanted.
These invasive implants are sometimes called BMIs (Brain Machine Interfaces). There’s even a version being worked on that would bypass the nervous system in the spine to help with spinal injuries.
With the most effective BCIs and BMIs, we’ll be able to control complex machines with our mind.
Gettin’ Beefy Wit It
Enhancing the body naturally, or at least without mechanical aid or artificial components, is another way to get more performance out of our future space-living selves.
In short, beef up to keep up.
Surgery would be one option, with the ability to somehow bolster our various body systems for extreme environments. The broad list of ways we could enhance a human body are:
Drugs
Hormones
Implants
Genetic Engineering
Surgeries
All that reminds us of pen-and-paper RPGs (role playing games) we played in the 80s and 90s.
In those with post-apocalyptic settings (our faves were Gamma World and Rifts) there were character classes called Juicers. Rather than cybernetics, a player could choose to augment their character with a ridiculous pharmacopoeia of enhancement drugs. Strength, speed, alertness, IQ—everything could be throttled up, using purely chemical and organic options.
Think Bane from Batman.
The theory behind it is sound; the body is a chemical system, after all, so adjusting that chemistry should yield results.
Such a future would be another case of fiction becoming reality.
Feeding The Machine
Eating is something pretty much everyone loves to do.
We have, like, a dozen TV channels dedicated to food, from meal prep to baking, competitions to restaurant overhauls, exotic cuisine to nutritional tips and how-to’s.
We love it.
Maybe because we all need to do it?
Kind of like breathing, feeding these organic bodies is pretty important to keep them making energy and staying alive. Mostly we enjoy this process, when we can—which is probably why we have so many shows dedicated to whetting our visual appetite and stimulating the desire to do more eating.
What about in space?
NASA, probably the biggest expert on eating in space, describes it like going on a long-term camping trip with your closest friends. Storage and disposal are important. Preparation varies with the food type. Some foods can be eaten in their natural forms, such as brownies and fruit. Other foods require adding water, such as mac-and-cheese or spaghetti.
Of course considerations must be made. For example, salt and pepper come in liquid form, because astronauts can’t sprinkle salt and pepper on their food in space. The salt and pepper would simply float away. Not only that, there’s a danger the grains could clog air vents, contaminate equipment or get stuck in an astronaut’s eyes, mouth or nose.
Nutrition is the centerpiece of any of it.
Call it “tactical nutrition”. Eating for the purpose of optimally fueling the body. When it comes to mission readiness the nutritional value of the food is as important as other factors, if not more so.
Still, treats need to be factored in. We are human, after all.
Who knows what future developments will bring?
Could you be one to come up with a way to bake a perfect birthday cake in space?
Our Bodies And Our Minds
To get us ready for Mars—and other such long term missions—scientists have conducted and are conducting fun (fun for the rest of us, anyway) experiments on willing volunteers.
There’s the CHAPEA (Crew Health Performance Exploration Analog) experiment being conducted by NASA. Another, Mars-500, was a joint operation between the European Space Agency, Russia, and China from 2007 through 2011.
Mental (and other) breakdowns on an actual Mars mission could cause a very expensive operation to fail, which is why these studies are so crucial. They give us a basic understanding of how humans can function both getting to and living on our closest planetary neighbor.
Though a year-long isolation study is an intense way to test the limits of humanity, it’s the best way to prepare for the future colonization of our solar system.
In our next blog we’ll continue our look at space and the human condition.
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