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Comment by narag | Hacker News Reader

Who has studied the effects of low gravity on a growing child? That's of course a rethorical question: nobody has.

So I can see people spending some years in Mars, similar to those who work in oil rigs. Hell, I would have done it myself! But a full-blown colony? Rising a child on half the gravity with unpredictable effects is a different animal.

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> Who has studied the effects of low gravity on a growing child? That's of course a rethorical question: nobody has.

There's a first time for everything. We should be able to answer a lot of questions by raising small mammals on the ISS.

> We should be able to answer a lot of questions by raising small mammals on the ISS.

I'm very curious on why this has not been done yet (or has it?)

My guess is that it's too messy and too time/resource consuming to do cleanly.

Also the ISS is in microgravity. IIRC Mars has something like half the Earth's. Moon would be a better testbed.

Mice are small enough that you could probably simulate Martian gravity with a smallish centrifuge. Plus, if they don't have any developmental problems growing up in zero gravity, you can probably safely assume that 1/3 Earth gravity is going to be OK.

As an undergrad student, I helped conduct a paste-diet study for NASA. The ideas was that rats who would be aboard the space shuttle would eat a combined meal of rat food mixed with water, thereby solving the problem of little bits of food floating around space compartments. I have assumed since that time that there would be continued experiments regarding animals in space, including the ISS, but I have never followed up on this.

Attach centrifugal living quarters to the main base generator...

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