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Mice In Space
benmcgruer writes "Space.com is reporting on the Mars Gravity Biosatellite Program. This international, student-lead, project aims to explores the topical issue of biological response to low gravity, specifically the 0.38-g found on Mars, by building and launching their own satellite, complete with 15 mice. NASA, Fark.com and Universe Today also have coverage."
Mice were the ones to build this planet.
Be nice to your lab rats.
Eh, no. I'm sorry, the correct answer is "Mice in Space." Yes. Terribly sorry, you must try again.
I propose that instead of mice, we put rats in space, and launch Darl McBride to Mars!
I always wondered what happened to Benjy mouse and Frankie mouse :)
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
I hear a Vogon constructor ship trundling in from the Oort cloud with hyperspatial bypasses on its mind.
How much did those mice pay NASA in order to be launched into space. Shit! I knew they were needing money for the Mars mission, but I would have never thought that Petco would be sponsoring missions.
So...is that a beowulf cluster of mice or what???
This could be pretty interesting, it should function as the first real step towards a manned mission to Mars, rather than just blowing hot air about the subject. We have to start somewhere.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis hebes
Mice leaving the planet... what do the mice know that we don't?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Mice came back super intelligent...
...Mouse overlords...
Soon we'll know if mice can be trained to sort tiny screws...
Ok... lets move on!
Nuts to the white mice. Pigs...In....Spaaaaaace!
"This is crazy, you realise we could all go to jail for this?" - my manager, somewhere I used to work.
After all, Jim Henson did similar experiments with pigs 20 years ago.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
If you think the message board on Fark is a legitimate source of news, you've been reading them too long.
Logitech or Microsoft?
Oh. Those mice. Nevermind.
at my college we built a .38 gravity bong in a mice infested dorm. we ALL went to mars that night.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
by cosmic rays, do ya reckon we'll be lucky enough to get a nice race of super mice?
Will the 15 mice be the Glow-in-the-Dark type?
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
I wonder how much of the data will be irrelevant because mice walk on four legs, not two, thus decreasing the bone loss?
Ok, so we send mice in space, right...and two of them hijack the hubble and uses its lenses to melt the polar ice caps...which would flood the world, letting dolphins swim freely. These dolphins have since been trained to emit a subliminal message which would, at the completion of the mission, compel every man, woman, and child to surrender to Overlord Brain.
I think sending mice in space is a very big mistake.
Reduction of gravity means eduction of weight not mass.
Surely to get a significant reading you'd need a mammal of equivalent mass and biology.
The weightlessness experience of the MIR cosmonauts provides much better space biology than sending a few mice into space.
And wtf is the IIS for then???
And this is not a reduced G vs micro G comment.
Worst
Maybe I'm missing it.. they speak of in-flight and post-flight data on one page, so will this thing eventually return back down to earth intact ?
If not.. erm.. those mice will be left to starve to death and rot, or be burned up in the atmosphere, or ?
( I know, I know.. hundreds of mice die at the hand of science every day, but would anything prevent the thing from returning back to earth 'safely' ? )
How much extra will it cost to bring the unit back to earth? I would save a little money on the return trip and add more sensors (or better sensors), maybe plan more experiments.
This is cool. If I was a physics student in highschool, I think MIT jumped to the head of the class. What is Cal-Tech going to do to top this?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
won't it be hard to use them? They'll tend to float off of the mousepad...
I still think nuclear is the best option for power, beating chemical, solar, and even mouse-wheel.
Isn't it kind of a stretch to say Fark.com has coverage of it? At least Slashdot tends to give you a paragraph or two summary, at fark you get one line, and a bunch of unmoderated comments.
I was initially worried about the ethics of sending mice on a one-way mission to Mars ("gee, let's see the effects of starvation in the low-gravity environment"), but I was glad to see that this will only be a simulation with the intent of bringing the mice back:
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
Do these mice run Linux on their Thinkpad laptops?
In Soviet Russia, the mice send YOU into space.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
MEPIS has the power of Debian and the simplicity of Mandrake
Not to mention is is almost an anagram of PENIS
"I for one welcome our new outerspace mouse overlords!"
Who's the git that keeps modding this joke up?
"Derp de derp."
Sorry to disapoint you.
The students will be using only female mice, says Wooster.
I guess they don't want to risk cosmic-ray enhanced population explosion on the offchance it might produce <obligatory simpsons reference>.
(for those of you blinking in confusion)
<obligatory simpsons reference>I, for one, welcome our new Cheese-Loving Overlords</obligatory simpsons reference>
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
...the low gravity trip to Richard Gere's Uranus. We have much to learn from them.
Pinky: Gee Brain, what do you want to do tonight?
Brain: Same thing we do every night Pinky, TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!
They're Pinky and The Brain
Yes Pinky and The Brain
One is a genius, the other's insane
They're laboratory mice, their genes have been spliced
They're dinky, they're Pinky and The Brain Brain Brain Brain Brain
Before each night is done, their plan will be unfurled
By the dawning of the sun they'll take over the world
They're Pinky and The Brain
Yes Pinky and The Brain
The Twilight Campaign is easy to explain
They'll prove they're mousy worth, and overthrow the earth
They're dinky, they're Pinky and The Brain Brain Brain Brain Brain Brain Brain Brain
Narf!
hate titty pee colon slash slash
Ok, but how many more mice will we get BACK?
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
I'd like to know what happen to the mice after they have returned to earth, and the exported is over. Will MIT students adopt them, will they go to petstores - Will people be lining up to buy pets who were once in space?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This remind me about an experiment that was covered on Slashdot where scientist were able to 'remote control' a mouse via implants in its brain.
What about sending a remote controlled mouse on Mars an make it perform experiments ? I mean it could very well go somewhere and bring stones back to a little rocket for sending them back to earth.
A mouse is very light thus easy to send on Mars.
Iraq: war to save the U
Mod me off-topic if ya like, just remember that so long as the joke is modded up, people will keep trying to earn a +3 Funny.
"Derp de derp."
I'm not moving to Mars without my mare!
Animals in space remind me of Laika, The Space Dog
Free XBox, PS2
.. pigs in space (ROTFLOL) .. I must be old cause I remember that from the Jim H. muppets show.. :-)
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
My high power rocket will never carry live animals (except insects) or a payload that is intended to be flammable, explosive, or harmful.
They'll lose their certification for SURE!
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Since they are all female, and kept in seperate habitats, it's doubtful that more will come back than we sent up--unless someone fucks up pretty badly on their mouse selection.
As far as i know, they allready have trained some mice to operate little motorbikes, to keep Earth out of the hand of bad people.
The most interesting question about space mice is how they are going to affect our fragging experience. I mean are space mice better when shooting at aliens or are they just yet another project wasting taxpayers' hard-earned money instead of doing something useful (like improving our frag rate)? Also, I would also like to know if the space mice will be available in PS/2 or USB versions since I saw no mentions of the bus types.
In a related article also on space.com it is mentioned that mice embroyes low gravity conditions develop normally, thanks to some pioneering work by Japanese scientists. It seems to me that mice get to do all the fun things.
put two compartments in, one with a tighter radius, (and thus lower gravity) - then they can simulate TWO different microgravity environments in ONE experiment (I recommend Lunar and Martian).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
We have yet to determine wether life exists on Mars, and yet we are planning to send living organisms to the planet.
How can we prove that life existed on Mars before we planted our own infestation?
Mice in space, and they got angry at each other, there would be...
MICE WARS!!!
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
...after they've been properly dissected and examined I imagine.
- do you know that your house is about to be demolished to make way for a local State Transit freeway?
- Do you care?
- do you know where the nearest pub is?
- Are you prepared (mentally and physically) to down 6 pints of beer in the next 5 minutes?
And , of course, the obligatory- do you know where your towel is?
.It must be Thursday, I never *could* get the hang of Thursdays.Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
And send that jackass Bush to the otherside of the universe.
Maybe get rid of that slew of aliens in his Administration as well.
Eww... Condelezza Rice...
Your dog wants a farmer's market; still no cure for boobies. Ackbar surrenders.
ANNOUNCER: Now it's time for: Mice!... In!... Spaaaaaaace!
I used to have this payloader rocket that you could load an egg in. One day I was digging around the yard under rocks (like most 14yro boys do) and I found some newts. Hmm, astro... astro... ASTRONEWTS YEAH!
So being the unusually cruel kind of kid that pulled the wings off of flies, and pretended his magnifying glass was the death star at alderon over an ant hill, I began my devious little plan.
I packed up my rockets, grabbed a few C6-7 engines I had (I love the long delay) and headed out to the school on my schwinn with the newt safely in tow.
I set up the launch pad, did all my pre-flight checks (make sure the fins aren't unglued, ect) and loaded the little guy in my egg payloader.
5...4...3...2...1 LIFTOFF!!!
Pretending that I was in mission control, I started saying things to myself like "Ok Houston, we have liftoff, going to full throttle" "Booster seperation complete, deploying parachute" I hopped back on my bike too chase the red and white striped parachute down.
The wind had carried the rocket south off school grounds, it was an overcast day so there must have been some high winds. I must have followed it for a 1/2 mile or so before I lost site of it. Then I noticed the red and white parachute dragging the cone and body of the rocket around the expressway from the wind that was kicked up by the cars. Then the unimaginable happened...
A orange 1976 toyota celica came barreling down the road. I swear to god, the driver looked me right in the eye, looked back at the rocket, and made a beeline straight towards it. I watched in horror as the right front wheel drove right over the plastic payload bay. After the cars had passed, I walked over to my injured rocket, which was now just a mess of carboard tubing, some balsa wood, and a bloody flattened carcase of a newt encased in a polyetheline casket.
I never flew a newt again.
Well I don't know about anyone else but I would just like to say all hail to our new mouse masters.
Heh! Some of us are good enough to score +4 (Funny). SO There.
The answer to all your questions is obviously 42.
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Now Now Children! Abusing The Moderators (bow down and worship their glory) is well-proven to be counterproductive and possibly dangerous to your karma.
There would be just another issue with bringing living organisms to mars. Polluting it with earth's organism's and making it therefore impossible to determine whether life once existed on mars or not.
All probes send to the mars are more or less sterilized to prevent contaminating the mars with earthian microbes.
This is another reason why it is just too early to got to mars by humans. First, we should at least 99.x% sure that it's a desert with no living cells at all. Looking at mars may well be the only chance for us to look at alien life, or at least better quantify the possibility of life in the universe.
How about instead of sending the mice, we send the students, put them in a little box, and feed them vegiterian for the mission.
Then we analise the ability for the students not to electicute themselfs in the maze at low gravity.
This would be far more insightfull. lol
On a Serious note, Good to see more Australian companys getting involved with the space programs. Will be good when we have maned missions of our own.
looks like these guys are taking paypal donations. i'm gonna send them $10. maybe they'll name a mouse after me.
these Fark != news comments are getting submitted to Fark. If you all are lucky and make the front page we can have a little /. Fark love in.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Good to see more Australian companys getting involved with the space programs
Oddly enough The University Of Queensland (Brisbane, Queensland, The Great Uncharted DownUnder) is a University not a company.
"A team of scientists and students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Washington, and the University of Queensland, in Australia, plans to explore these questions. They're going to do it by launching mice into orbit."
"The mice will descend by parachute and land near Woomera, Australia"
("woomera" being an old Aboriginal word for "where the fuck are we? there's nothing of any interest within 100 miles of this place!") ie almost as completely "out in the middle of nowhere" as Mars is (relative to Planet Earth, that is).
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
if your post about /. posting something about Fark gets put up on the front page of Fark? And people start posting there about /.?
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
And getting back about 1300 of them.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
...no one can hear you sqeak
Umm, no offense (and I check Fark multiple times a day myself) but Fark doesn't actually cover stories.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Then, says Wooster, they'll return to Earth alive and well
...no? gunna send to to the rodent astronaut retirement village are they?
where they will be cut into lots of little bits to find out what happened to them...
Karma: Bad. Calmer, good.
OR, they could receive Massive doses of radiation causing them and their descendants to mutate into a race of Super powerful Mutant Monster Mice (on Mars)!!!
So Be nice to your Mice. Because when the time comes to Welcome our new Super-Rodent Overlords, I for one, will be ready...
Sig currently under construction. Mind the gap....
(likely scenario)
NASA Guy #1: Good. The Velveeta One has returned. I get to keep my job.
NASA Guy #2: Are the mice okay? Oh, they're coming out now... (cootchie-coo voice) How ya little guys doin'?
Mice: We're fine, thanks.
Long pause.
NASA Guy #1: Um. Anyone remember these things being able to talk?
Mice whip out giant death-ray guns. Orson Welles' ghost appears, laughing his ass off.
end
I would like to see the effectiveness of mouse traps in a Mars environment. Maybe they should send some loaded traps up as well...
I don't think mice are really representative of anyone's Mars colonization plans - we should be sending humans - perhaps we could round up some junk faxers / mailers / miscellaneous low-life - at least biologically they are a better match. Also it makes sense to keep the mice here as they contribute to the Earth's ecosystem.
Hey, can I volunteer my mouse? I sure hope it's not a one-way trip...
Can someone explain to me why humans must be specifically trained to become accustomed to experiencing the high g-forces generated during lift-off, but we can dump a bunch of everyday lab mice into a capsule and shoot them up to space without worrying about any ill-effects for the mice?
I mean, I understand that these people couldn't care less about the mice, but surely they must have some confidence that the mice will reach orbit safely in order to conduct the experiment. Could mice survive as many G's as a human?
and their logo looks like somebody picking their nose. wtf?
I hope you're not insinuating that Darl is related to rats? Being an owner of pet rats... I'll have to assure you that rats are quite intelligent and friendly... Darl is obviously unrated.
Where are the mice going to go to the toilet?
I wouldn't want to be a mouse in low gravity with flatulence. I can picture it now...
[mouse propelled forwards]"Squeek"[splat!!]
Nup... glad I ain't one o' dem mouses
8-P
Especially when the skinny one answers to the name of Pinky and the fat one answers to the name Brain...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Just doesnt have the same ring as pigs. (-:
Nah it looks like that picture of the chick with the vibrator case on her finger pressed against her lips that was up on Kristen's Archive back in the ml.org days :)
"Gosh, Brain, what are we going to do tonight?"
"Same thing we do every night, Pinky...try to take over the world!"
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Personally, I'd like to see how cats adapt to space. How will they handle landing on their feet when there's no down? Will they be able to walk on soft walls using their claws? How will they handle the litterbox problem? Lots and lots of interesting things to study, and animals smart enough to experiment with their environment and learn from experience.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
seeing all those probes die on mars the men became mice
Sign me up. I'll be headed to fark.com right away. Thanks for the tip!
If they are dead - it's their sentence. If they survive - it's their amnisty. And a part of their rehabilitation.
As far as I can see from history that's they way Australia begin speaking English - UK sent Britain prisoners to Australia.
Less is more !
http://www.marsgravity.org/Engineering.php
34 RPM ????
..and the mice are doing quite well at getting themselves launched in an escape vehicle.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
Unfortunately that would get in the way of the ISS's primary role - to soak up cash that could otherwise be directed towards more useful projects.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I'm glad to hear of this mission, especially since my local university (UQ) is among those participating, but I'm concerned about the absence of a control group.
:-)
There should be two compartments on the satellite, one rotating and one stationary, so they can directly compare mars-type gravity with zero gravity, and also a population of mice on Earth to represent the normal case.
I suppose they could run a control group up to the ISS, but having them on the same satellite makes more sense, and would ensure that the mice are all subjected to the same stresses during launch and reentry.
Anyhow, here's hoping the folks here at UQ don't screw up the deorbit, reentry and landing phases so we get the mice back intact.
Six boxes to use in the defense of liberty: letter, soap, ballot, witness, jury, ammo.
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink =796964
er did I say Linux? I meant Linus. Linus Torsvald. In a photoshop contest.
a mouse was discovered on Mars, pics here.
I had tried so hard to forget that show
You'll be hearing from my therapist!
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
I suspect this is one of Brain's ideas to TAKE OVER THE WORLD (that's what they do every other night, why should said night be any different)
... Using my own modification of called-id technology, I have set up this massive computer to automatically answer the phone and store each caller's personal specifics. To keep the computer from overheating, I've hooked up an elaborate ten thousand gallon water cooling system... But the important puzzle piece of this plan... is to get everyone's address - the world's most complete mailing list, because everyone in the world will be on it. Then, we shall overload the global postal system, choking every single P.O. Box and mail slot with gross amounts of unwanted junk mail. The nuisance of it all will surely drive everyone mad. But, I shall be the savior - 'Put me in charge of your world, and I promise to remove each and everyone's name from all junk mail lists.' Jumping at the opportunity, people will only realize too late that I am their new, ever-powerful, and unimpeachable ruler."
Here are some of Brain's schemes involving space (source: this site):
"Using my own patented Jimmy Brain technique, I have already succeeded in purchasing, with no money down, every apartment, condo, and office space on the planet above the 39th floor...We will alter the Hubbell Space Telescope so it concentrates the sun's rays on the ice caps, melting them...flooding the entire planet up to the 39th floor, thereby leaving me in control of the only usable real estate on earth."
"Tonight's plan involves space junk... There are hundreds of discarded satellites orbiting the earth... Tonight, as all the discarded satellites pass within mere miles of each other, I will manipulate the world's largest magnet to move them into position, spelling out 'Brain is your ruler'."
"Tonight's plan shall unfold in less than one half hour... Those wires I've hooked up to the lab surveillance camera run to a powerful forty megawatt uplink, which I have built from common household tin foil, a standard wire coat hanger, a number three salad fork, and that big pie plate from last Thanksgiving. With which I have located and stealthily tapped into an abandoned CM-2000 satellite orbiting our globe. This idle transmitter was yesterday but a floating piece of space flotsam, but now it is a workhorse. Broadcasting my infomercial to every man, woman, and child. Reaching the earth's entire population as we speak. Ye-ess!! I've compiled the ultimate list of advertising phrases, no one viewing this infomercial will be able to resist making a purchase. And once they've ordered our product, I'll be just a short step away from taking over the world!
Narf!
My other UID is 1337
Space.com may be reporting on it, but the only work they seem to have accomplished is to revamp their website. Even their newsletters contain almost no news, and mostly puff pieces.
In short, this project is vaporware, the same as it has been for nearly four years now.