Perspective Camera
30 mm

Today’s SmallSat Express launch on SpaceX now was a treat. This was SpaceX’s first time to fly a “flight-proven” rocket for the 3rd time, and Planet is the prime, with SkySats and Doves flying on this mission. All of my favorite space companies working together!

I have a wishlist idea for the SmallSat community, something I affectionately call “Rats in Space” and I was reminded of it while brainstorming space colonies with Larry Lessig and Chris Hadfield this weekend.

There are various motivations for establishing a human settlement on the moon. Some envision a lifeboat, lest disaster strike planet Earth. Some envision “charter civilizations” with experiments in better governance, a stepping stone to farther-flung off-world civilizations. For these to work, moon base alpha needs to not only be self-sufficient. It would also have to support human reproduction.

And this is when I learned something new from an ISS astronaut — nobody has tested mammalian impregnation in space or in lunar gravity. People have tried to simulate it on Earth, but it is not a good proxy. There is a centrifuge on the ISS, but it is not big enough, and it causes vibration modes when running. And there have been attempts to study this before, but they experienced failures in implementation and red tape.

So, that made me think of a simple experiment that we might want to run: A small sat cylinder could spin in LEO to precisely mimic a steady lunar-gravity environment, like a rodent-sized Rendezvous with Rama (Arthur Clarke gets the posthumous naming rights). You would send up pregnant rats in various stages of pregnancy, and others ready to copulate in space. These multi-generational reproductive studies, if wildly successful, could be verified with a simple video feed (proof of life). And if fetal development and growth was hampered for some reason, it would be good to know early on.

4 responses to “A wish list for the SmallSat Community: RATS IN SPACE”

  1. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Woot! The loudest cheers at mission control came when the booster stuck the landing — the third time for this particular autonomous spacecraftHere is an infographic on today’s launch from the payload integrator Spaceflight Industries They have standard prices online: $295K for the 3U size (Planet Dove size) to LEO. They have a MOON option too!

    Reply
  2. 13ericralph31 Avatar
    13ericralph31

    Too bad we have to wait an egregious 24 hours for the next launch, though 🙁

    Reply
  3. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    And by strange coincidence, I see my baby Luna headlining Universe Today on this very topic:
    "We Still Have no Idea if it’s Safe to be Pregnant in Space

    Can humans reproduce in space? The short answer is that we don’t know. The long answer is maybe, but there are significant barriers to overcome to make zero-gravity pregnancy safe, and research into the subject is only just beginning. …

    In the long term, if reproduction and pregnancy in space are going to be made safe, advances are needed in one of two areas. We can attack the problem from an engineering standpoint, and develop spinning space habitats that mimic 1G with artificial gravity. Or, from a medical standpoint, we can find ways to help embryo development along at the cellular level, perhaps through drug treatment.

    For now, Earth’s gravity well (and perhaps other gravity wells, like Mars), are the safest havens for pregnancy and birth. Leaving the proverbial cradle is not going to be a trivial matter. In this instance, ‘Mother Earth’ is an apt personification of our planet, as it is here alone that our reproductive systems have evolved to work, and taking our biology beyond it is going to require creative adaptation, both technological and medical, to have a hope of success."

    Reply
  4. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Kibo-sabe! Regarding that ISS centrifuge, it’s on the Kibo module that i visited before launch, hereJAXA JEM Kibo ModuleWhen I review their "JAXA Rodent Missions" in it looks exactly like what I had in mind. In that PDF, I see work on "aging-related symptoms" like bone and muscle loss… but no mention of reproduction. Two takeaways: 1) I wonder why gestational studies were not on their roadmap? and 2) the path to bypass PETA headaches might lie with a JAXA or ESA mission. 🙂

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *