'Mouse-Tronaughts' to Test Low-Gravity in Space

RandBlade writes "The Telegraph has an article about plans to launch mice into space with simulated low-gravity for five weeks, to test the effects of low-gravity on their bodies. This "will be the first time mammals of any kind have lived in partial gravity for an extended period." Hopes are that this will provide information useful for plans to launch men to Mars, which has one-third of the gravity of Earth."

Comments

Reproduction in space

[tjstork]

Can people reproduce on other planets? Can any earth creature? We can conceivably provide a breathable habitat, running water, etc. But, it is becoming clear that gravity plays a fairly strong role in the development of living things from fertilized egg to adulthood. Perhaps it might be impossible to reproduce on the moon or mars, because there is not enough gravity. Or, maybe you can but there will be a statistical risk of some undiscovered birth defect.

It may turn out that the only viable planet to really colonize is Venus, then, it becomes a question of, what do we do with 10^20 tons of carbon dioxide!

Re:Reproduction in space

[Pedrito]

Can people reproduce on other planets? Can any earth creature?

There's no reason that human babies couldn't be conceived and come to term in low or even zero-g. Yes, it's been done with other 'Earth creatures'. Besides some insects, there were some fish that were bred on Skylab, I believe. As I recall, the Earth born parents were unable to control their swimming in zero-g, but the babies had no problem. I assume human babies would also adapt natural abilities in zero and low-g that astronauts learn to clumsily do.

But the fact is, human bodies are poorly adapter to low and zero-g for several reasons. Radiation and muscle atrophy are one problem, but bone loss is another serious problem. Thus it's likely that any humans or other complex animals born in zero or low-g wouldn't live very long. Probably not even long enough to reproduce.

The only way for humans to evolve to be able to surivive would be for the conditions of low-g living to be slowly introduced over many generations or to somehow short-cut evolution.

You mean astromouse ?

[theefer]

The word astronauts come from the greek : astro (stars), nautike (navigation). So astronaut litteraly means star navigator, and mouse-tronaut would mean mouse navigator, which lacks some sense here.

I'd rather have said astro-mouse (star mouse) instead. Or if anyone has the greek word for mouse ...

Enhanced Gravity

[vontrotsky]

In high school I did a project which involved growing plants in simulated hypergravity (produced by centripetal acceleration), then tried to extrapolated into the low gravity regime.

Up to 140% of normal, the plants grew faster with increasing "gravity". From this I reasoned that lower gravity conditions (moon, mars) would be healthy for plants.

Of course, NASA's results may vary. Especially when using mice.

Jeff

isn't this pointless?

[bob_jenkins]

I would have thought the effects of gravity scale with weight. Mice are so small, they're nearly surface-oriented instead of gravity-oriented anyhow. They've got almost no gravity-induced features in the first place.

Mars society

[WindBourne]

is behind this. They are planning on succesfully longer trips and at varying amounts. Hopefully, NASA, et. al. will design a platform to place on the ISS which will do this constantly.

This Is Good News

[schnarff]

I attended a lecture by Dr. Robert Zubrin, widely known for his Mars Direct plan, this past Friday at the National Geographic Society HQ in Washington, DC, where he made the good point that we need research on artificial gravity for missions to Mars much more than we do research on zero-gravity. Basically, the reasoning is that on a 2.5 year Mars mission, 1.5 years would be in Mars gravity, and the transit time would likely be spent in a 1-G artificial environment, since zero-G deconditioning for a 6-month trip would leave astronauts in poor shape to do their research on Mars once they got there. Since acheiving an artificial 1-G environment is easy through the use of centripital force, I'm glad to see at least the first steps in this sort of research are being done.