You seem not to be familiar with Conway's Game of Life.

I think reading about it will answer several of your questions, but surely some of it is just historical (the glider was discovered 43 years ago): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glider_(Conway%27s_Life)

thanks, no I didn't think this was that old! Completely surprised.

Good observation. At some point Von Neumann became interested in modeling a self-replicating machine, and created what he called "cellular automata", and added features to the model that he assumed were necessary for self-replication. I don't know if his model assumed that raw materials were needed to reproduce, though. But in any case the biological metaphors were there from the beginning.

Von Neumann's model was complicated, and in the early 70's Conway created a simplified version, which is this "Game of Life" linked to on this page. I'm not sure where the space metaphors came from. Maybe due to the protean space games then being created. Maybe due to Star Trek or NASA's space program.

Conway's Game of Life is a long established bit of computer history. The Glider has been named and used for very many years.

The simple shapes (and many common large shapes) have canonical names.

http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/List_of_common_still_lifes

http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/List_of_common_oscillators

http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/Category:Spaceships

All the names have a flying motif. For example, I beat the last level using three light weight space ships.

Did you try it with one first? That's what I did, but maybe I just got lucky with the positioning.

I did, but I wasn't paying attention so I was significantly off-center. I have no doubt that it could be solved with one. But, I figured, electrons are cheap.