Space-travelling mushrooms

It is said spores can survive for thousands of years with no supply of air or light (e.g. Tutankhamon's tomb). So does that make them able to survive space travel as well? I don't see why not. The spore would need to be totally shut down during travel and have some way to know when it has arrived at a location to start living again (e.g. when it gets wet or warm); apparently spores already can do this. It would also need to be able to withstand a heavy dosis of radiation, but I think the more simple a lifeform is, the less fatal the effects of radiation are on it.

That's all very nice and neat to have fungi travelling through the void of the cosmos, but what good does that do anyone? I have a few theories on it:

- Mushrooms/fungi as terraforming "devices"
I'm not a biologist, but from what I understand fungi have a huge role in the ecosystems on Earth. They are also organisms capable of making changes on a very small level, yet cover huge areas (there is a 2.200 acre mushroom in Oregon). I think it's possible for spores to land on a planet without burning in the atmosphere. The reason space shuttles and such experience so much heat is because they are coming from an orbit, meaning they have been rotating at speeds over 25.000 km/h. A spore is sturdy enough to afford falling straight down, and is light enough to be reduced in speed very easily. A spore falling down to Earth would most likely get slowed down to only a few 100 km/h. Some might not survive the fall, but spores usually come in big numbers.

Once landed the spores would need to be able to adapt to the current climate of the planet. Again, I am no biologist, but I do know fungi can be quite resilient, even against pretty heavy chemicals, so again I see them pulling off that trick. Then it's a matter of growing, converting the atmosphere into gases that are desired by whoever sent the spores into space in the first place, and make a fertile soil for vegetation. Basically, as long as you have energy (sunlight) and a "machine" running on that energy (fungi), I guess you can make alot of changes. Once the terraforming is complete, the fungi either kill themselves off, or integrate themselves into the new ecosystem. Some can become parasitic, either to stimulate natural selection, or just because they don't want to die and rather see other organisms dying to sustain themselves.

- Mushrooms/fungi as surviving refugees
Another theory would be that fungi are actually complex lifeforms (they do form somewhat of a neural network), that either have always had that form, or have adopted it to survive space travel. When any planet is threatened by a war, asteroid, supernova, black hole, or whatever dangers the cosmos offers, and if that planet is inhabited by sentient species, it would not surprise me if those species try to make a last survival effort. Sending yourself in one form or another into all possible directions is one such effort. It would explain why some mushrooms have hallucinogenic effects in humans, because you'd actually be fusing a part of the consciousness of another (advanced, space-travelling) being into your own. The reason many mushrooms are not psychoactive could be either that they are also sentient beings but not as compatible with the human mind as their other variants, or that they are non-sentient mutations of the original sentient fungal lifeforms, mutated after landing on a new planet.

- A combination
A combination of these two theories is also a possibility. An advanced race might develop both a certain type of fungus to be a terraforming machine, and another type of fungus to be a consciousness escape pod. Perhaps they planned to re-adopt their original form after the sentient fungus had grown and developed enough to shape structures, or perhaps they planned to fuse with another sentient species and have them help to restore the original form, or perhaps even they were satisfied with their new fungal form.

- Life seeding
Somewhat related to the terraforming theory, but not to terraform a planet for the personal use of whoever designed the fungus, but rather to kickstart the cycle of life on a planet.

I was originally planning on having a discussion about this in the chatroom, but noone has been there since 21 april, so I'm not sure wether it will work. If anyone is interested in discussing these theories and related subjects in a realtime manner, I propose monday 9 may at 18:00 UTC (20:00 CEST, 14:00 US east coast). If you are planning to come to the chatroom then, I recommend you announce this in this thread (so I know how much cookies&milk to bring), but to keep your theories and ideas to yourself until monday, otherwise all discussion matter may have already been covered (= run out) on the forum by then.

The details needed to get to the chatroom:
IRC-server: deoxy.org (either configure that in the options of the IRC client, or type "/server deoxy.org" in the status window)
Port: 6667 (default, you probably don't need to specify this anywhere)
Channel: #noblerealms (type "/join #noblerealms")