I used to think we, as Gundam fans, should know all the basic
requirement of living in space. So I was kind of shocked to hear that
the shape of animal cells can be deformed in microgravity. Sure
enough, a little Googling found me this paper:
Effects of microgravity on cell cytoskeleton and embryogenesis
SUSAN J. CRAWFORD-YOUNG
Int. J. Dev. Biol. 50: 183-191 (2006)
At the end of this post, I will quote a few paragraph verbatim, but in short:
Rats (mammal) mated but pregnancy did not occur. Mouse embryos were
resorbed or failed to developed from the 2-cell stage to 4-cell stage
(and so on). NASA essentially ban human pregnancy in microgravity.
(No mention of method of contraception)
Unlike fruit flies and rats, birth defects in human is pretty much
unacceptable. So it seems quite possible that we will never push our
luck and attempt zero-G fertilization/pregnancy/birth. That means if
we are going to try space and/or lunar colonization, we will need
artificial gravity at 1G. It's even possible that prolong exposure to
zero-G would cause a lasting effect on a man's sperm or woman's egg.
I wonder if we already have any data from astronauts/cosmonauts
returning from long trips who experienced infertility. Problem is
that we may run into privacy issue since there are only so many long
mission astronauts in their paranting age. It's a bit of chicken and
egg (hmm...) problem.
So if we were to colonize space or Moon etc, we will need to provide
not only air, water, food and radiation shielding, but 1-G environment
for couples who wish to reproduce. At the minimum, the pregnant woman
will have to live in a gravity block for the whole 9 months. An
O'neil cylinder, as seen in Gundam, will definitely do it. But
anything smaller will be a tough proposition.
Following are quotes from the article:
Rats were allowed to mate in a Cosmos 1129
biosatellite experiment and the females failed to become pregnant,
although fertilization had occurred (Serova et al., 1982).
Development of mice in microgravity has not been successful
to date when they were exposed to microgravity throughout the
whole developmental period: Kojima et al. (2000) noted that the
pre-implantation embryos were resorbed. A flight of the space
shuttle Columbia (STS-80) had 49 mice embryos onboard.
None of the two cell stage embryos showed any sign of development
and they all died (Shenker and Forkheim, 1998).
Human pregnancy is counter indicated by NASA with
microgravity listed as one of the factors. The reasons for this
are that microgravity "May have impact on in utero embryonic
development and reproductive physiology in both males and
females as evidenced by animal studies" (Jennings and Santy,
1989).
--
Dr. Core
--------------------------------------------------
The Gundam Mailing List MK-II [email protected]
Archives: http://www.gundam.com/gml
Help: Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with this in
the BODY: help list
