Foggy - Class Experimental Ship

An experimental type of purposed organism deployed by the Harki of Binary Targos which could reach and survive in the vacuum of space. 

This creature is regarded as the first successful attempt to reach space by the Binary Targan harki. Though it could only sustain a crew of 1, and it was quite low on the food chain of the space borne ecosystems, it was an important step for them to take before they could launch any object, or themselves, into space and survive. This allowed them to detect space threats much better, or even to attack the space borne harki if they wanted. It would also allow for travel and tourism between these levels.

The first one ever made was eaten by predators, but that allowed the bioengineers designing it to learn how the giant space creatures operated and to avoid them more effectively next time. The crew member of this ship was remembered for their sacrifice, and the 2nd mission sent to space returned to Binary Targos.

It was also sometimes tradition for some harki to paint various patterns on their bioships. This made it easier to tell individual ships apart and could also showcase their roles and any achievements they made. Some missions could feature these markings as part of the payment, for both the crew member and their ship. This gave both individuals a lot of cultural prestige.

The vehicle consisted of several large wings and a large body which was designed to store a lot of energy; it could store a huge amount of highly energy efficient fat in almost all locations of its body except its wings. Due to the engineered nature of this organism, its processes were made to be highly energy efficient. However, the harki knew that they would require more than just wings for spaceflight...

At very high altitudes, the wings were designed to turn into a radiator. The ship would instead rely on a special type of organic thruster, a design that the harki were new to designing. They conducted dissections on some spaceborne megafauna who have fallen into their planet from space. This worked by directing and ionizing beams of waste matter and ejecting it at high velocity using a powerful type of electromagnet. By making use of many cells that can produce a voltage, high power electricity can be created and form electromagnets, which the ship can use to direct thruster beams into a very tight cone, giving it a lot of efficiency and the entire creature the ability to steer. 

The ship needed a small but powerful digestive system to supply enough energy to its large body and the very energy intensive wings. The bioengineers needed to save space. After flying into space, it's likely to burn almost all of its fat storage so it might need to obtain food in space to prevent starvation. While landed on a planet, its metabolism rate slows significantly to regain its fat storage over a long time but in space it speeds up significantly so that it can obtain the energy needed. This makes the ship require a lot of food, which can be very hard to obtain. After eating a large amount of food, it would have regained enough energy to perform reentry, which is done by gliding using its wings to slow its fall and save energy. After sufficient knowledge of space environments and travel is obtained, these creatures would be sent to other planets to obtain more information. Diplomats might be sent to space using ships similar to this as well.

In order to allow its single crewmember to sleep, the ship would sometimes need to take control of its body to allow the mission to be complete. Leaving itself undefended in the open with no control would make it extremely vulnerable to predators, so the ship's brain and the crew member's brain will take turns sleeping in order to continually allow the ship to be controlled. The crew member is placed near the brain of the ship and is completely connected to the ship, so that the 2 entities essentially share the same body. The ship supplies nutrients and oxygen to the crew member while they are piloting the ship. 

The designers of this species gave it small reproductive systems. Its children would start off very small and would need to be cared for very closely, but it saves them the need to repurpose other creatures to grow new ships of this design. Though it would have very little impact on its performance in missions due to very low sexual dimorphism, the ships could have male and female sexes. Females were more common, outnumbering males approximately 3:2. 

They are no longer used, now being superseded by more advanced purposed organisms, and then organic versions of Teleporters, but they have had an influence on later bioship design.