Tech from Singularity’s Children: 3D Printing Organs in Space

3D Tissue Printing in Space is another technology I play with in my Singularity’s Children books.

The ultra-rich have found a new way to stave of a visitation from the grim-reaper by packing themselves in gelly and shooting themselves into orbit. There, cloning, cybernetics, and 3D tissue printing can fashion them new bodies.

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In Space, the printer can place cells anywhere without worrying about gravity deforming the growing wet blob. Nutrients can be misted across the pulsing membranes as a new vessel for an oligarchs consciousness takes shape…

Once the body is done and ready for a freshly scooped out brain, all the fiddly neural wiring can be handled by software. Bulk connections are made in the brain-stem and dynamically mapped to sensations or actions in the synthetic body.

That’s the SciFi, this is the fact:

“In the microgravity environment, cells exhibit spatially unrestricted growth and assemble into complex 3D aggregates, in contrast to typical growth in monolayer (2D) cultures as occurs on Earth. For over two decades, investigations conducted in space and on Earth have shown that 3D culture supports the generation of tissue-like characteristics in vitro that are more biologically representative of native in vivo-like cell growth and function.” 3dprint.com