I don't think #1 is very puzzling: can you expect a gradual continuous evolution from wiggly machines in solution, which communicate primarily by diffusion, and which must be robust to genetic variation, to a factory in hard vacuum? The path must be not just possible, but fitness-enhancing in each neighborhood (on the scale of the steps evolution took historically). In our history there was some evolution in this direction: introduction of compartments, active transport, complexes which cut out most of the diffusion step between related enzymes. But the compartments and the complexes are not qualitatively different.
It seems a harder question why life stuck with protein/bone/enamel instead of discovering lighter and stronger densely-linked carbon structural materials. Maybe because bone is continually incrementally torn down and rebuilt?
Re #2. I think anyone would agree that biology-style nanomachinery is interesting and promising. But factory-style opens up a whole new level of possibilities with orders of magnitude greater performance on multiple measures. People can pursue both! Flapping-wing flight had both scientific interest and potential applications in more-agile flying machines; that doesn't mean fixed-wing wasn't a much more strategic direction in the years around 1900.
Yes, the tensile strength is like steel but lighter. (And if you ever get gored by a rhino horn you aren't going to shrug and say "hey it's just protein.") But it's a long way from the limit of strength.
I don't think #1 is very puzzling: can you expect a gradual continuous evolution from wiggly machines in solution, which communicate primarily by diffusion, and which must be robust to genetic variation, to a factory in hard vacuum? The path must be not just possible, but fitness-enhancing in each neighborhood (on the scale of the steps evolution took historically). In our history there was some evolution in this direction: introduction of compartments, active transport, complexes which cut out most of the diffusion step between related enzymes. But the compartments and the complexes are not qualitatively different.
It seems a harder question why life stuck with protein/bone/enamel instead of discovering lighter and stronger densely-linked carbon structural materials. Maybe because bone is continually incrementally torn down and rebuilt?
Re #2. I think anyone would agree that biology-style nanomachinery is interesting and promising. But factory-style opens up a whole new level of possibilities with orders of magnitude greater performance on multiple measures. People can pursue both! Flapping-wing flight had both scientific interest and potential applications in more-agile flying machines; that doesn't mean fixed-wing wasn't a much more strategic direction in the years around 1900.