Making Babies In Space May Not Be Easy

Hugh Pickens writes "Studies of reproduction in space have previously been carried out with sea urchins, fish, amphibians and birds, but Brandon Keim writes in Wired that Japanese biologists have discovered that although mammalian fertilization may take place normally in space, as mouse embryos develop in microgravity their cells have trouble dividing and maturing. The researchers artificially fertilized mouse eggs with sperm that had been stored inside a three-dimensional clinostat, a machine that mimics weightlessness by rotating objects in such a way that the effects of gravity are spread in every direction. Some embryos were ultimately implanted in female mice and survived to a healthy birth, but at lower numbers than a regular-gravity control group. Part of the difference could be the result of performing tricky procedures on sensitive cells, but the researchers suspect they also reflect the effect of a low-gravity environment on cellular processes that evolved for Earth-specific physics. '"These results suggest for the first time that fertilization can occur normally under G environment in a mammal, but normal preimplantation embryo development might require 1G," concludes the report. "Sustaining life beyond Earth either on space stations or on other planets will require a clear understanding of how the space environment affects key phases of mammalian reproduction."'"

Comments

Re:Where can I find results of all those experimen

[stephanruby]

where can I find results of all those experiments?

You better clear out your calendar, you have a lot reading ahead of you.

Re:Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do *this*

[DerekLyons]

Using acceleration to counteract undesirable effects of microgravity appears to be a universally ignored solution.

It's not ignored - it's turned out to be devilishly difficult to arrange.
 
 

Back in the Gemini days they actually bothered to join a pair of spacecraft together and spin them up. The effect was about 1000th of a g, but it was a successful mission. Everyone presumed that NASA would continue this research after Apollo, with longer tethers and slower rotation, a 1g environment could be created.

Everyone who? Because everyone I know is familiar with the problems with those tethers bring with them.
 
Its extraordinarily difficult to stop and start the rotation. Its difficult to avoid tension problems during payout, it's REALLY difficult to prevent snarls during retraction. It's extraordinarily incredibly difficult to make orbital corrections while tethered and spinning...
 
Until someone comes up with some engineering solutions to test (and they are working on them and two tether deployment tests (both failures) have flown on the Shuttle), any experimentation is moot - kinda like sticking your finger into boiling water to see if it burns you.