Slashdot Mirror

Have us engineering students, engineers and insane rocket enthusiasts/investors design a mission to mars using live animals to test as many technologies as possible before you even think of sending a human mission. We US engineers are either bored building endless varieties of consumer crap or worrying what are we will be asked to build in a war with Russia and Iran. I vote C, a moused mission to mars. Think of the merchandising!

Actually, the Mars Gravity Biosatellite, a collaboration between MIT and Georgia Tech, is working on something analogous to what you describe. They aren't planning on actually sending it to Mars though, just Earth orbit:

The Mars Gravity Biosatellite will carry a small population of mice to low Earth orbit aboard a spinning spacecraft creating "artificial gravity" equivalent to that on the Martian surface. The five-week mission will conduct the first in-depth study of how mammals adapt to a reduced-gravity environment. Groundbreaking data from this mission and its successors will be essential in determining future possibilities for human space exploration.

You fools! Don't you see what's happening?

1. The MIT team is raising money for a satellite that will go to Mars.

2. They are getting people to give them the names of their Valentine's to put on the side of another satellite.

3. People who would pay for something like this are geeks; geeks are mostly males; and most males are attracted to women.

4. Ergo, a team of scientists with STRONG MARTIAN CONNECTIONS is collecting the names of hundreds--maybe even thousands--of EARTH WOMEN.

That's right-- MIT IS HELPING MARTIANS STEAL EARTH WOMEN!

(Don't believe me? Here's photographic proof.

The MarsGravity biosatellite will hopefully provide some answers on this point, assuming it's ever launched. But at the moment you're taking a very glass-half-empty point of view.

These could be pebbles (i.e. sedimentary) or they could be lapilli (volcanic structures formed by the sticking-together of ash particles). They could also be zones of cementation that developed long after deposition (e.g., concretions), in which case they do not say much about conditions at time of deposition. The latter two are more likely, because the "balls" are so spherical (most pebbles are not so perfectly equidimensional).

I've been excited about the spheres, too. Unfortunately, there seem to be so many (and as you noticed, so perfect) that I can't imagine them ever being tumbled about in a Martian spring.

I imagine they're the result of volcanic or impact processes throwing molten material up into the air. With a gravity one-third of Earth's, large, hot particles would have more time to coalesce into a sphere before they hit the ground.

Bad news for the search for life, though. But part of me roots for the "dead planet" theory. We can put all the strip miners in a refurbished Saturn V, point it at Mars, and let them fight out mineral rights on the trip!

a similar program (geared towards Mars) has found that the real show-stopper to all of this extended micro-grav (so far) is our bones. Humans appear to lose bone mass continuously in microgravity, even with countermeasures applied.

Mars Gravity Biosatellite Program

What I would like to know is why more research isn't being done on artificial gravity. So many of the health problems encountered in LEO gravity cound be sidestepped if you just spin the damn craft.

I would love to know why some of the effort being spent on watching things get sick in 0g isn't being directed to something as simple as spinning a glorified beer keg in orbit with some mice in it.

Check these links for more information;

• Centrifuge Accommodation Module
• Space Station Fundamental Biology Research Facility
• ISS Elements: Centrifuge Accommodation Module (CAM)