Cell Vault

A cell vault is a radiation-hardened location, often (but not always) found aboard long-haul starships or other residential orbital infrastructure, where samples of whole human cells are kept for future use in biomedical techniques.

Utility

Radiation, various occupational injuries, and complications of cryostasis are all hazards of working in a spaceborne environment. Moreover, being a spacer does not make one immune to the usual issues that can cause a need for replacement tissues and organs, such as cancer and autoimmune disorders. Cell vaults exist to preserve a sample of an individual's pre-disease cells so that, should it come to pass that that individual needs tissue replacement, a fresh batch of tissue can be grown from the stored sample which can then be transplanted into the individual with minimal risk of rejection.
Gene therapy techniques can be applied to a sample from the gene vault to produce 'baked in' results, such as immunity to a particular strain of treatment-resistant bacteria that had colonized the host's system or the deletion of surface protiens that cause autoimmune reaction. For example, cryoprotectant therapy is a common addition because it makes preservation of cells easier. Restructuring treatments often make use of materials from cell vaults to ensure that changes made to the host body are not subject to rejection. The implantation of cloned cells from a cell vault can be coupled with the implantation of an immune augmentation implant or other cybernetic augmentation to improve integration with the host body or to produce the effects of organs not normally found in human bodies in the way of non-vestigialism, such as artificial glands that produce vitamins B and C to reduce the risk of malnutrition.

Manufacturing

Cell vaults must protect their contents from deleterious external conditions and provide an environment that is suitable to the survival of cells or, barring that, the genetic information they contain. Thus, the scale of a cell vault varies based not only on the number of individuals whose tissues are preserved, but also the hostility of the environment in which they will be stationed and the resources of the mission to be given over to long-term habitation concerns. For example, a cell vault found aboard the ESCI Revelation would, at minimium, be the size of a single general purpose module due to the large number of samples it would contain. This module would likely be kept in the axial cargo racks because being centralized within the habitat sphere would keep it far away from both the ship's fusion drive to the aft and the incoming RAIR fuel stream to the fore while also providing connection to the ship's cryocoolers along the axial fuel tank.