NASA to send rats to space to test micro-gravity

indianexpress.com ^ | August 22, 2014 4:49 pm

[BenLurkin]

NASA is planning to send rats to the International Space Station (ISS) for a longer duration of up to three months to better understand the long-term effects of micro-gravity on living organisms.

While rodents have flown on space shuttle flights in the past, those missions have only lasted a week or two.

The new mission, however, could range between 30 and 90 days, depending on the availability of spacecraft to ferry them on the round-trip, ‘Space.com’ reported.

“This will allow animals to be studied for longer period of time on space station missions,” said Julie Robinson, NASA’s chief scientist for the space station.

Robinson said of the 35 or so studies where rats have gone into space, few of them have gone for more than two weeks.

[TigersEye]

If rats are such good scientists could they let them take over the climate research department? They sure couldn’t do worse.

[StormEye]

"Monkeys would probably give a better determination of the effects on humans. They might even make useful permanent residents if they can be trained to perform simple tasks without pushing any wrong buttons."

Tens of millions of dollars spent to send astronauts into space to clean up monkey poo and piss.

[BobL]

“Wasn’t this done in 1960’s?”

Actually, yes, a RAT was flown in the 1960s - and again in 1998, in exchange for getting President Clinton off the hook for handing our best technology to China.

SICKENING.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glenn

[Texicanus]

Need to send up a cat to liven up things up a bit...