Making Babies In Space May Not Be Easy 262
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."'"
Where can I find results of all those experiments? (Score:2, Insightful)
Folks at NASA have been running experiments in space for decades....where can I find results of all those experiments? Or was it money down the drain?
Logic fail. (Score:4, Insightful)
If I put an egg into a blender, I'm pretty sure it'd have a hard time forming a chicken too.
Re:The challenge (Score:5, Insightful)
"There is no reason to expect that their clinostat successfully captures the essence of the problem"
I looked at the image of that clinostat. The researchers are probably pretty smart people, but there is just no way that a centrifuge on steroids can duplicate zero-G. The embryos have to be subjected for changing gravitational forces. Said forces may cumulatively add up to zero, in theory, but those embryos aren't experiencing theory.
Re:Logic fail. (Score:4, Insightful)
And real mothers rotate, too! Many human mothers spend hours per day standing, resting on their backs, and resting on their sides. Not to mention spending time actually moving.
Re:Logic fail. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Logic fail. (Score:3, Insightful)
Randomly changing the directions of gravity != no gravity.
How is gravity in all directions = no gravity ?
Re:Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do *this* (Score:4, Insightful)
It's like people are so amazed by how awesome zero-g is that they can't accept that working against it might be the best option.
That's probably what influences the designers of spacecraft.. the awesomeness of zero-g...
Either that or because systems involving artificial gravity are too costly to justify themselves, and the "brain dead" solutions are actually smart solutions which save money/make missions possible.
Perhaps a spaceflight engineer would respond "problem: no gravity in orbit, we're not used to this. brain dead solution: create artificial gravity! price/practicality is no object if it means we have no new problems to solve!"
Maybe at some point there will be a zero-g problem which really is easier to solve with centrifuges than with anything else, and you can bet when that point comes centrifuges will be chosen.
Re:The beginning bit is probably tricky too (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do *this* (Score:3, Insightful)
No matter, the Japanese space program proposed a module that would allow the study of incremental gravity on mammals, everything from low gravity to three times earth gravity, or the astronauts could sleep in it. That was scrubbed.
Why (not) on Earth would you want to simulate >1g in space? Anything below 1g, sure, but for greater you could just use a centrifuge on Earth where it doesn't take 1000kg of propellant to get every kilogram of payload to your test apparatus.
Re:Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do *this* (Score:3, Insightful)
It'll be tough to build a 1G chamber on the Moon.
It'll be a damn sight easier than building a 0.16G chamber on Earth. Unless you have a source of Cavorite that you're not telling us about?
Re:Just for the record... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or rather Larry Niven invented a plot device to create the Belter culture... And of the hundreds of plot devices that he invented, one happened to be somewhat correct.
No, no, no! (Score:2, Insightful)
As soon as you are in free fall, you're not affected by gravity (at least not in a significant way).
Then could you please explain why you are accelerating downwards? Hint: it is due to a force called GRAVITY. Freefall is when the ONLY force that acts on you is gravity. Under normal circumstances there are two forces which act on you: gravity and a reaction force between you and whatever you are sitting, standing, lying etc. on. In freefall you remove this normal force NOT gravity.
English Fail (Score:2, Insightful)
If you are outside the atmosphere, and not accelerating then you're basically in free fall.
Err no. If you are in freefall then you ARE accelerating be the very definition of what freefall means. If you let go of a ball it will accelerate downwards and it is in freefall. Freefall means that you are free to fall i.e. that only force acting on you is gravity and so the force of gravity will cause you to accelerate.
Sure, gravity is pulling you somewhere, but it doesn't really have an effect on anything inside the spacecraft (your reference frame is moving with you).
Hang on a minute. How can you possibly say that gravity is pulling you somewhere and at the same time claim that it is not affecting anything inside the spacecraft?
Orbit is just freefall around an object due to gravity. Yes, gravity acts on everything in the spacecraft, but not _relative_ to the spacecraft. Maybe English is not your primary language?
Gravity from every direction no gravity at all. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Reproduction in space (Score:5, Insightful)
After about a year in space you cannot walk when you land on earth.
This isn't necessarily a problem. Sure, if you want to walk around Earth then you're going to be in a bit of a fix... But what if you plan on spending the rest of your days in space? What if it's a one-way trip?
If we are going to live in space we are going to have to figure out how to create gravity on whatever structure we decide to inhabit.
I thought we'd already figured this bit out? All you have to do is spin the structure.
I really doubt we would mutate fast enough to take advantage of weightlessness to survive.
We don't need to.
When's the last time you saw somebody sitting out in a snowstorm waiting to mutate and grow an insulating fur coat? Around here we just but on a coat. We're human beings, we have brains, we can make and use tools.
That's the whole point of experiments like this one. We're not going to wait around for environmental forces to craft us into better organisms... We're going to identify the problems and fix them, just like we have for thousands of years. That's what we do.
Re:Logic fail. (Score:3, Insightful)
How is gravity in all directions = no gravity ?
When most people, even most space biologists, talk about "the effect of gravity" they really mean the effect of some force that counters gravity in order to reduce acceleration. ie: in "microgravity" you're still being acted on by gravity, accelerating toward the nearest, largest mass, but that mass is perpetually moving out of the way before you hit it. The forces resisting gravitational acceleration are very small and we say you're in "zero G."
So, "gravity in all directions simultaneously" is like "no gravity" because no contact force opposes your acceleration. "Gravity in a single random direction that changes all the time so it averages out to zero" is like "no gravity" in that the body maintains is distance from the nearest, largest body, but it is not like "no gravity" in that there is a physical force (viscosity) acting against the gravitational acceleration.
Re:The challenge (Score:5, Insightful)
People around here bash scientist a lot, when they are really reading the media. I had a teacher once who had a favorite saying that it seemed like he said at least once a class... "All models are wrong, but some are useful". The same can be said about simulations. After an experiment is performed, in which something is simulated, conclusions are supposed to be drawn. Then, further experiments are supposed to prove or disprove these conclusions. Are you suggesting that they should not have tried this experiment first (which is probably 1/10 of the cost of doing it in space)? They will probably use this experiment as justification for a grant to actually try it in space.
Science is constrained by fiscal realities. And the honest fact is that even if we do have the experiment done completely in space, it is still being done on mice. We won't know how it affects humans until we send a girl up there to get knocked up and see what happens.
Re:The challenge (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, it couldn't possibly be that space launches are expensive and thus they figured they would get the result from the next best thing before booking the ISS for a more rigorous study...
For the coders out there, when you write a complicated application engine, do you try and do the whole thing in one go and then hope it works when you run the binary, or do you start simple and then gradually expand your app in features and functionality testing it while you code ? Experimental science work the same way. You don't blow your entire budget and any chance on to get further funding on an experiment that may be a fantastic fiasco without having a good set of experiments to suggest it may be worthwhile. This experiment may not be perfect, but it does suggest that doing the same thing on the ISS might be worth it.