Life in space - related experiments

[nhnifong]

I'm looking for past and planned spacecraft that have carried living organisms into space. And I'm hoping that someone may know the answers to these questions

What kinds of life have grown on the ISS? (other than humans)

Have lifeforms been grown on any craft other than the ISS?

What is the most advanced self sustaining ecosystem that has been launched into space (if any)

Have any space missions investigated life's survivability inside an asteroid or micrometeoroid?

What is the longest that any known life form has inhabited space?

Has any attempt been made to grow plants in lunar soil samples or replica soil based on lunar samples?

[Rakaydos]

I seem to remember hearing that Spiders adapted very well to space. Not sure if that was ISS or Spacelab, though,

[lajoswinkler]

Oh, there were plenty of experiments. Officially and deliberately, there were all kinds of organisms belonging to Plantae, Bacteriae and Fungi. Probably even viruses like bacteriophages, though I'm not sure about it.

Not only ISS. Skylab did it, too. At least Skylab.

I don't know about the most advanced self sustaining ecosystem and the asteroid/micrometeoroid thing.

What do you mean by "longest that any known life form has inhabited space"?

There have been attempts to grow plants in lunar soil.

[fireflower]

What kinds of life have grown in µg?

Ants, plants, worms, bacteria, lots of little things, including the accidental experiments like the common cold, which gets superpowers in µg. Compare to human lymphocytes for whom µg is like kryptonite.

Have lifeforms been grown on any craft other than the ISS?

The common cold certainly has. Everyone got sick on Apollo 7.

What is the most advanced self sustaining ecosystem that has been launched into space (if any)

Biologically-based life-support systems? None that I know of.

Have any space missions investigated life's survivability inside an asteroid or micrometeoroid?

Other science has. It's where we've got one of the modern variations on the theory of panspermia. Basically, being hit by an asteroid so hard you're flung into space is not enough to sterilize Earth rocks, nor is the flight through space, nor is crashing into another planet. Bacteria are tenacious. It's why NASA has such stringent decontamination procedures for probes going to Mars. Not only would bacteria survive the flight, they would probably evolve to survive on Mars.

What is the longest that any known life form has inhabited space?

A cosmonaut, 13 months iirc. It's really, really bad for you. The human body just can't handle µg, to say nothing of the rads beyond Earth's magnetosphere, or within it in the Van Allen belts.

Has any attempt been made to grow plants in lunar soil samples or replica soil based on lunar samples?

Note it's not "soil," it's "regolith." The special ingredient that regolith lacks is decaying organic matter. Anyway the answer is yes, both Lunar and Martian regolith has been simulated for growing things like potatoes. Thank the Incans, they bred a tuber hardy enough for a different planet.

I think I can tell where you're going with this. Basically, in order to do things kerbals do all the time, humans will need to develop the following:

1. G-equivalent systems like a rotating torus that can be trusted not to break and fly apart.

2. Passive and/or active shielding systems to block the rads.

3. Closed-loop life-support systems, either mechanical or biological.

Or just develop cryostasis. Then you get put in a meat locker, loaded onto the ship, and wake up on Mars. But that technology is even further down the line.

KSR devised the concept of terrariums in his book 2312. They're asteroids hollowed-out and spun for gravity with whole ecosystems grown inside and placed into interplanetary transfer orbits. Their exteriors are excellent mass-shields against rads. The spinning prevents all the problems of µg. The biomes support human passengers physically as well as psychologically. A short-distance shuttle takes you from one planet to the terrarium and then, months later, from it to your destination planet. It's a brilliant if long-term solution. Building the prototype will take years.

Zubrin's alternative is to not care about the rads and trust the lives of astronauts to a steel cable between the rotating crew module and spent 3rd stage. He's a crackpot. This isn't his only completely mad idea.

I like the idea of a magnetic shielding system against rads because it can also be used for propulsion and to make aerocapture possible without the mass or the risk of an ablative shield. Your magnet can be in the form of a superconducting ring, which is incidentally a wonderful shape for a rotating spacecraft. If the whole thing is spinning rather than a single part that eliminates one or two joints between the rotating section and the stable section, which reduces mission risk. The maiden voyage of this technology is slated for a trip to Uranus.

[nhnifong]

Awesome post fireflower! I didn't know that everything had been so thoroughly researched already and I really appreciate the high-level overview you provided!

I didn't think that microgravity would be as big an issue as it is. I figured that radiation would be the main problem.

As far as closed loop ecosystems, I'd be very curious to see how one of these things would fare if you wrapped in in shielding, and supplied the light via mirrors and a UV filter.

Seems like something you could fit on a cube sat.

[fireflower]

Unfortunately there's not much to debate. All the space agencies of the world have been studying the effects of µg on the human body for decades. It does a list of gnarly things, none of which we've been able to protect against, some of which we don't fully understand.

Major health problems:

-Handicaps the immune system and supercharges infectious disease.

-Completely clogs the sinuses as they can no longer drain.

-Permanent and irreversible premature bone loss.

-Breaks down the muscles and heart unless you do hours of cardio every day.

-Permanent and irreversible reduction in eyesight. For some reason this is more an issue with men, and one eye more than the other.

Inconveniences:

-The toilet is a vacuum cleaner you and everyone else are putting against your nether regions.

-The food will make you lose the will to live within 3 days.

-Dirt, dust, dead skin, eye boogers, and hair float around everywhere and clog instruments instead of disappearing into the carpet and thence into mom's vacuum cleaner or the dog's mouth like it does on Earth.

Plants and animals don't have it much better. Plants don't know which direction to grow.

As I said the debate isn't whether µg is livable. It isn't. The question is how much gequivalent is necessary to the human body and the living things humans want to carry with them. I recommend a new space station comprised of a spinning disc rather than a ring so there are multiple gequivalent sections.

Experimental groups:

1.00 gequiv Earth

0.38 gequiv Mars/Mercury

0.16 gequiv Luna/Ganymede/Titan

0.03 gequiv Ceres

0.0006 gequiv Phobos

µg control

Ideally there will be two identical stations. One will be placed within Earth's magnetic field, perhaps LEO, and the other just outside it, perhaps at Lunar L2. Recruit some doctors to be 'nauts, seal them up there for a year, have them all monitoring each other's health, and then shuttle them back down to Earth to monitor their recovery. The knowledge will be immensely valuable as each of the planets and planetoids I've listed has been listed for colonization. It would be nice to see what exposure to their gravity fields will do before we go there and find out.

[Idobox]

Zubrin's alternative is to not care about the rads and trust the lives of astronauts to a steel cable between the rotating crew module and spent 3rd stage. He's a crackpot. This isn't his only completely mad idea.

I like the idea of a magnetic shielding system against rads because it can also be used for propulsion and to make aerocapture possible without the mass or the risk of an ablative shield. Your magnet can be in the form of a superconducting ring, which is incidentally a wonderful shape for a rotating spacecraft. If the whole thing is spinning rather than a single part that eliminates one or two joints between the rotating section and the stable section, which reduces mission risk. The maiden voyage of this technology is slated for a trip to Uranus.

A rotating crew module and a counter mass linked by a high performance composites like Kevlar or Aramide would be a much simpler, cheaper, lighter, safer solution than a torus. It could also spin much more slowly, which means less Coriolis force or apparent g gradient between head and toes.

Magnetic shields are useful, but only stop charged particles, not gamma or x-rays, nor neutron radiation. They represent most of the radiation, so magnetic shielding is of little use if you can't protect against that. During the 210 transfer, the astronauts would receive about 400mSv, to compare with the 1000mSv they are allowed to receive during their whole career.

Sure, that's a high dose, and that will significantly increase cancer risks, but I don't have any issues sending people if they are aware of the risk.

For sure, the best would be to send them as fast as possible, wasting a lot of deltaV in the process. It will always be cheaper and lighter than lead shielding