Nuclear Powered Aliens

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Biological fusion is not cold fusion, it is using organic ceramics and organic glasses to control a hot fusion reaction.

"Cold fusion," at least in the way I've always seen it used, refers to fusion with an incredibly low activation energy. The temperatures and pressures needed for a hot fusion reaction - such as powers the stars - are I believe well above what an organism could produce... or even survive.

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

That said, it's likely that most systems will have at least one gas giant, and those are excellent sources of ionizing radiation. The Juno probe's 2 week trip around Jupiter was an estimated 20 million rads, which is probably enough of a dose to "feed" even their largest vessels (assuming you either rubber science things, or give them a racial Reduced Consumption).

If I opt to rubber science it, I'll probably have the bioships orbit gas giants from time to time, as well as incorporate radioactive sources into their bodies for a "trickle feeding" type effect to help sustain them between visits to the gas giants. I'm considering having their photosynthesis have roughly 10% efficiency (a brief bit of research indicates this is somewhere near the theoretical maximum for biological photosynthesis - or at least photosynthesis based around chlorophyll), so I'd probably give their radiosynthesis similar efficiency, which makes things even worse (one with human-like caloric requirements would need over 100 million rads per day). On the bright side, most of the malakim have lower caloric requirements than humans, because it's only a minority (one branch out of, at current count, 9) that have roughly human-level intelligence.