Living Ships

[.50 Caliber]

what about gold titanium alloy which will stop the freezing ice.

[[Bryan]]

so what your saying is that a ship made of metal isnt going to work either? Since titanium deposits wouldnt work, why would titanium plates work? Or any metal? In fact, a ship made out of one giant ship shaped chunk of metal would be super strong, much moreso than a regular ship. Would be hard to do wiring though.

You could also say that there were super hard plantlike organsims that form a giant colony rather than making deposits. These might grow out into dents created from impacts to "heal" itself. Another advantage would be that it cant be affected by ion rays or emp's. But i digress...

No no, what I am saying is a ship made entirely of any metal would be insufficient to withstand the rigors of traveling at any appreciable speed through the vast reaches of space, on the grounds that while things are far and few between in space, it certainly is not empty. In a place where a critical mistake could be the first and last thing you do, not planning for such would be foolish. Titanium while light and strong cannot match the strength/weight ratio of a diamondoid material comprised of mostly carbon atoms containing minute quantities of other atoms, forming a nearly unbreakable material.

Why would you need this material? If you accelerate your spaceship to say 50 percent of C (Speed of Light) and impact something the size of a pea, it is the equivalent of smashing into something weighing in the mega-tons, and the amount of energy that will be released the same: A little Nuclear Bomb going of right then and there. Doesn't matter what is there it's going to be vaporized no matter what it is made of. Granted your ship survives this event it is going to need to dissipate lot of heat and energy super quickly, which I doubt any metal would be able to keep up with our diamondoid based materials which are excellent conductors of heat and electricity.

Granted the ship is not likely to be comprised entirely of these materials, primarily the exterior of the hull would be layered with a combination of diamondoid materials, water/ice/metals, in a fashion that any kinetic impact would ablate the outer layers leaving the inner layers intact (mostly) and the very inner hull would be unexposed and untouched. I cannot say how a giant chunk of metal would react under similar circumstances, but we can see what a bullet can do to many metals at way way below relativistic speeds.

Regardless it would be a combination of things that would make up the materials in a ships hull even that of a 'living ship' would most likely be comprised of a multitude of materials and layers for protection of the vital systems within. The only way such would be structured no withstand high velocity impacts is if there were some sort of technology that allowed the ship to move great distances in space/time without actually moving very fast at all, such jump-drive or wormhole of sorts.