Clearly the end goal for this research is figuring out why the fungi can block radiation and taking advantage of that for better radiation shielding. We’re not going to be flying around in spaceships coated in fungi.
It'll probably require layering different types of material to convert higher energy radiation (like cosmic rays) to more manageable spectra.
Better hope it doesn’t die halway to Mars!
Tbh I'd be more concerned about the humans cracking psychologically before the fungus dying. They are hardy buggers.
We’ll call it the lob-star
You mean a protista?
We can do better than nature just by taking the best from everything, integrating it together, and removing all the extra junk. Imagine if we just used it as inspiration.
I'm not saying tiny factories wouldn't end up looking like cells, but I expect the similarities to be superficial, as we have access to more robust materials to serve as feedstock and can have better control of the operating environment.
in a sense a planet is one of these already, just a little less maneuverable than we would maybe prefer out of a ship, and inverts the hard shell soft interior crustacean-ship idea
for large ships maybe you could literally use a planet, e.g. swing a spare one out of the solar system in the direction you want to go... if rogue planets can hold down an atmosphere and stay geologically active [0] maybe you could have liquid water oceans and sea life and atlantean cities scattered around the seafloor drawing hydrothermal power
plus you're hidden pretty well flying dark in interstellar space, maybe civilizations deem it prudent to leave their parent stars for dark forest concerns etc, maybe you could even harness earthquakes/vulcanism to (very slowly) manipulate the angular velocity vector enough to course-correct and navigate
There's one interpretation of evolution where fungi are the original farmers. Everything from lichen up to and including trees only happening because it suited fungi to do so.
Anyhow, seems like they think it is the concentration of melanin in the fungi. The melanin has been sequenced and it is the same type found in human skin. Maybe we will see this adaptation in space fairing humans... Wonder if current black astronauts are less effected by radiation.
EDIT: Probably something that will seem so obvious in hindsight.
More seriously, the ideal is obviously an actual radiotrophic plant, right? That honestly seems within reach of genetic engineering, if it doesn't already exist.
The coolest part about fungus is that it will grow into its environment, so I would imagine molds (no pun intended) could be used to "grow" a panel, sheet, etc almost like natural 3D printing.