Derek Lowe has an interesting post about bacteria that may hold the key to long-duration space travel. Unfortunately, it won't be of much use to any of us, other than Bacterium-Americans...

But what about keeping spares around in a spare nucleus - a sort of "break glass in case of emergency" DNA vault? That would require biological engineering beyond our current capabilities, but if and when we get there, I can think of a good use for such an organism. For some years now, Freeman Dyson (yep, him again) has been advocating what he's called an "astrochicken" space probe. That's a part-living device that is hardened to survive in vacuum, use solar power, furnish its own propulsion, obtain its fuel from local sources, and so on. A satellite that needs to eat, in other words. (You can find one description of such a device in his book Infinite in All Directions)

I think he's got a very good point, and that biotechnology might well turn out to be a key for space exploration. What better way to package such an organism's DNA than to follow the durable example of Deinococcus radiodurans?

Ever seen the "Tinman" episode of StarTrek? It has an intreaging idea that we could breed our spaceships. Biologicals have the advantage of self repair and self duplication. Maybe its not useful on a human size yet but it would be a good thing to start some research into... It would seem to me that it would be a good thing for a gov't project. Basic research on basic principles as opposed to tec demostrators. (more like NACA then NASA) Long range goals that no company in their right mind would research for the paybacks are likely to be decades away. If the gov't is going to waste money at least we should push for them to waste it on stuff that might work rather then stuff we KNOW wouldn't.
What do you think?

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