Alternatives in house building – bones and spider silk?
Now, this is completely speculative, but let's assume we could mass-produce bones in the desired shape, as well as spider silk, and then use them to build skyscrapers. The bones would play a supporting role, with the spider silk essentially holding the bones together. We'd have a stable foundation of reinforced concrete, which is what the first few floors are made of, and then this bone-and-spider silk structure would be placed on top. Could something like this even be load-bearing, and would it be better than the materials used today?
Spider silk can also be elastic, and that's what you should use, specifically in such a way that these "bone elements" aren't tightly screwed together; they're simply connected with this spider silk and a damping element in between. Depending on the required properties, the appropriate spider silk is used. A similar approach could be used with bones.
And now comes an additional feature: The elements are connected to elastic fibers, but also to less elastic ones, which are subject to tension. These fibers also have a certain amount of tension that can be used to adjust the strength of the tension. And why all this? Well, the building could dynamically adjust its stiffness as needed, and this would vary depending on the area of the building.
Very thin, conductive threads can then be placed between the spider webs and the bones, which change their resistance depending on the location. This would allow us to measure the load on the building and where, or even whether there is damage. The whole process is then run through an AI system to make predictions.
Would something like this be theoretically possible and sensitive, or not?
Addition: I don't mean classic bones, but rather artificial ones that are produced in a bioreactor or otherwise.
It's not that way
Cambridge
(but not really my building site)
Did you steal?
This is a serious question!
How did you get the bones?
From the few animals?
No only LSD
No fun 😀
Yes, that would be a different problem, here you don't get around this artificially. So, as I would have imagined, one would produce "bone rods" in a kind of bioreactor, which would not need bone marrow, it is only about the pure carrying force, and things do not look like classical bones, but rather more like normal bars.
And then this is cheaper than steel concrete?
As a basic structure, this could actually be done.
It would be ideal if all conceivable forms could be produced from these bioreactors.
That's so bad, sorry.
But then we could build planes from these bones?
Why only houses?
Not at first, maybe at some point.
The real advantage: It would be a lot easier and better recyclable, at least in theory.
If the appropriate parts could then also be produced decentrally in bioreactors, this would sometimes bring quite different advantages.