Pigs in Space!

[Jonfliesgoats]

Flying pigs for a few months in lunar orbit may give us a chance to work out life support technologies and evaluate the effects of long term spaceflight outside our protective magnetic field.

I know flying farm animals doesn't play well anymore because they could die, but pigs, similar to humans as they are, may be worth flying around the moon.  How does someone propose a mission like this and have it taken seriously?

Also, the challenge of feeding farm animals in space would allow us to make human sustainment relatively easy.

[Tex_NL]

Humans have the intelligence and body parts to move around and feed themself in zero G. Pigs do not. You will have to strap them down and attach plumbing to both ends just to keep them alive.
Nothing personal, but I can't even take this post serious let a lone the mission proposal.

[Jonfliesgoats]

No offense taken at all.  It's a ridiculous proposal, to be sure.

True, the pigs would need umbilicals and all sorts of other things.  That said, working out pig or mouse survival would make the challenges facing human sustainment relatively easy.  Honestly, I have trouble idea seriously.  It's ridiculous.

Is the idea any more ridiculous than not sending lab animals into prolonged deep spaceflight befor humans, though?  We engineer a greenhouse and some habitation modules for a trillion dollar manned flight to mars with no biological testing of these systems in high radiation and low-g environments?  

Politically, pigs on umbilicals in space for months on end may be a hard sell too.

Edited December 17, 2016 by Jonfliesgoats

[Scotius]

You could get the same data flying pigs in LEO. Which is pointless, because we do have ISS there with constant human presence generating ample amount of data. Only thing we lack is experience with environment filled with high levels of radiation.

[Jonfliesgoats]

That's why I am proposing a porcine mission to lunar orbit.  Realistically, it would probably be rats or mice.

Edited December 17, 2016 by Jonfliesgoats

[Tex_NL]

And now for some 'real' Pigs in Spaaaaaaaaace.

At long last, the legendary S.S. Swinetrek returns in the first all-new episodes of the epic “PIGS IN SPACE” saga in more than 20 years! Join First Mate Piggy, Captain Link Hogthrob, and Dr. Julius Strangepork as they match wits with an annoying alien stowaway who really knows how to get under your skin.

 

[Jonfliesgoats]

That's wonderful!

[Jonfliesgoats]

We could send this thing to lunar orbit for radiation evaluation:

http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/20jan_marsmice/

[kunok]

Mice are good choice, because:

-They are light (20 grams or so)

-we can develop similar tech that we need

-the tech developed will be maintenance free and more fault tolerant, because animals can't repair things

-the tech will be already miniaturized, space is a field that every gram counts

-Don't forget that one of the advantages of using animals instead of humans is that we can dissection animals, dissection of astronauts will have very bad PR

And why keep it in moon orbit? Land in the moon, we need that 0,16g data!

[Tex_NL]

Yes, mice are lightweight and cheap to feed on earth. Once landed on the moon a mouse will probably be alright but I doubt you will get them there alive. Even mice will not be able to feed themself in zero G unless you strap them down and shove the food into their tiny little faces.

[kunok]

21 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

Yes, mice are lightweight and cheap to feed on earth. Once landed on the moon a mouse will probably be alright but I doubt you will get them there alive. Even mice will not be able to feed themself in zero G unless you strap them down and shove the food into their tiny little faces.

Already done https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bion-M_No.1

I don't think that you need to strap the mices at all. I will research

Edited December 17, 2016 by kunok

[James Kerman]

2 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

strap them down and shove the food into their tiny little faces.

That's how the wife feeds me...

On topic Organs on chips would be better ethically and probably less messy.

[Jonfliesgoats]

I suppose a mouse lunar orbiter that orbits for several months then lands would be possible.  That would simulate a human mars mission and recovery.  Giving the mice a chance to procreate for some generations would also be useful.  With regard to feeding, mice on hoses would not be able to reproduce while mice that can reproduce can't be on hoses.  Perhaps keeping them in tightish hamster tubes would allow them to claw their way to food/moisture/each other?  After a year on the lunar surface the mission would end or the mice could be recovered.

A viable population of reproducing mice along with year's worth of feed, etc. would be challenging.  Luckily, we have some experience keeping mice live in space already.

 

I feel a distinct need for some comforting numbers!

[Ultimate Steve]

It'll happen when pigs fly.

*slowly walks away*

[Tex_NL]

I've been thinking about this a bit more and you might get good results with Squirrel monkeys or Capuchins. Both are small, lightweight, very intelligent and adaptable. With adequate hand/footholds they are capable of moving around and actively feed themself. The only real problem would be waste extraction. Normally waste will simply drop to the ground but in zero G floating waste will pose a serious problem. For short missions diapers would suffice but they have a limited 'capacity'. Not an option for long duration missions.

Edited December 17, 2016 by Tex_NL

[Jonfliesgoats]

100 mice: 2kg

Food: 5g/day/mouse * 730 days*100mice = 365 kg

Water (no recovery/recirculating): 12ml/30g body mass/day*2000g*730days*1g/ml water = 584kg water

 

Vessel Mass (based on payload to vessel ratio of Apollo CSM): 10tons

Vessel Mass (based on CSM&LEM payload to vessel ratio): 40 tons

 

100 mice would just be too heavy!  

 

10 mice would make a 4 or 5 ton vessel viable.  Long term, would there be enough genetic variation to support two years of mouse reproduction?  Also, to control expenditure of stores, the food would have to have contraceptives mixed in until a certain point, at which you allow the mice to become fertilized.  So the feeding/pharmaceutical schedule for the mice would have to be worked out.

Monkies are actually a really good idea!

I think we need to find the soundtrack to our monkey moon mission:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/sep/23/monkey-music-tamarins

Edited December 17, 2016 by Jonfliesgoats

[Tex_NL]

7 minutes ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

Monkies are actually a really good idea!

And after some more digging on the interweb not even that original. NASA send Miss Baker on a sub-orbital in '59.

Edited December 17, 2016 by Tex_NL

[Findthepin1]

We could build and launch a little gravity wheel thingy to LEO and put mice in it to see whether the substitute gravity will have any effects on living things different than real gravity. 

There's also ethical questions we should be asking about these kinds of things. 

[todofwar]

I say throw an ant farm into space, on a small rotating station. Ants probably won't mind higher RPMs (even humans have better RPM tolerance in 0g), so you can have something the size of a picnic table spinning away. Throw it in an orbit that purposefully goes through the Van Allen belts, and with a nutrient paste system that provides enough sustenance for a few generations. Retrieve it, genetically test the ants that went up against some controls. Don't even need to bring it to the surface, they have genetic labs on the ISS now. Best case: enough survive to observe any long term genetic effects. Worst case: get rate of dying over time (you would need some cameras set up to monitor how many are still alive).

[James Kerman]

Ants have also been done on the ISS.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/786.html

[Garibaldi2257]

4 hours ago, todofwar said:

I say throw an ant farm into space, on a small rotating station. Ants probably won't mind higher RPMs (even humans have better RPM tolerance in 0g), so you can have something the size of a picnic table spinning away. Throw it in an orbit that purposefully goes through the Van Allen belts, and with a nutrient paste system that provides enough sustenance for a few generations. Retrieve it, genetically test the ants that went up against some controls. Don't even need to bring it to the surface, they have genetic labs on the ISS now. Best case: enough survive to observe any long term genetic effects. Worst case: get rate of dying over time (you would need some cameras set up to monitor how many are still alive).

and the ants that come back are genetic super-ants that take over the ISS and then descend to earth and take over the world, killing off all humans........

[todofwar]

46 minutes ago, James Kerman said:

Ants have also been done on the ISS.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/786.html

Yes but that was a microgravity test. This would be a prolonged radiation exposure test, specifically targeting the Van Allen belts. 

24 minutes ago, Garibaldi2257 said:

and the ants that come back are genetic super-ants that take over the ISS and then descend to earth and take over the world, killing off all humans........

I take no responsibility for any super ant revolutions that restore this planet to its rightful owner--

I am normal human who only wants to study ants. 

[kerbiloid]

An old photofake.

http://pikabu.ru/story/polyot_pyanogo_porosenka_v_kosmos_3500068

13 hours ago, kunok said:

Mice are good choice, because:

-They are light (20 grams or so)

So, mice look bad choice.
A human body is up to 2 m tall = 0.2 atm of pressure difference. That's why spacehumans suffer from zero-G: nothing pulls the blood down, while an additional 0.2 atm pull it up.
Mice are 2 cm high, so their study gives not very much about the human problems
(Launching a giraffe is an opposite extremity, though looks exciting)

11 hours ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

100 mice: 2kg

Food: 5g/day/mouse * 730 days*100mice = 365 kg

Water (no recovery/recirculating): 12ml/30g body mass/day*2000g*730days*1g/ml water = 584kg water

I.e. a ton of cheese and a hundred of mice.

Proposal: make a long cheese sausage (or cheesage) and put the mice at one end.
While the mice still being alive will day by day eat their way _{yes, a poetry} through the cheesage to the return capsule, cut off the eaten parts with mice fallen dead and decouple.
Several survivors will gather in a return capsule at the opposite cheesage end, and then land.

11 hours ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

Monkies are actually a really good idea!

In a hot country where they are common - yes. You can't imagine how shocked we were in school when read that USA had been launching monkeys instead of dogs. Like robbing a zoo and launching exotic species.

P.S.
Koala looks fine for space flights. It probably wouldn't notice any difference.

P.P.S.
Btw, are koala edible? Can they treat it as a farm animal?
 

 

Edited December 18, 2016 by kerbiloid

[Nibb31]

Ants don't have much relevance to human life support systems.

Most life support experiments have been done on animals already. Most ISS experiments on animals don't get much public coverage because of extremists who would scream out about it, but they exist. There is also Russia's Bion program (The Bion spacecraft are derived from Yantar military observation sats, which are derived from good old Vostok!). The last one flew in 2013 and carried gerbils, mice, geckos, fish, snails, and other microbes and critters, with various rates of survival.

As for measuring radiation exposure levels, there are more reliable ways of getting raw data than sending animals. 

[James Kerman]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

P.P.S.
Btw, are koala edible? Can they treat it as a farm animal?

In reality koala's are infected with many parasites and diseases.  You don't want to eat one.
They spend their days in trees eating eucalyptus leaves that have a narcotic effect on them but the compounds are toxic to humans.
In effect they are the diseased drug addicts of the Australian animal population.