Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids — or maybe it is.
That’s the question Dutch entrepreneur Dr. Egbert Edelbroek hopes to answer by experimenting with human reproduction in space next November.
“Humanity needs a backup plan,” the biotech boss of SpaceBorn United told the MIT Review. “If you want to be a sustainable species, you want to be a multi-planetary species.”
Unfortunately, the quest for humanity’s future won’t involve any out-of-this-world lovemaking. Rather, it will test the limits of in vitro fertilization in an orbital setting.
Specifically, SpaceBorn will be rocketing a mini lab into low Earth orbit (defined by NASA as 1,200 miles or less above our planet) where said IVF will take place.
The lab, containing both a sperm and an egg, is about the size of a shoebox that is designed to handle high radiation and lower gravity. It also has rotational capabilities to move at different speeds to replicate Earth’s gravity, the moon or Mars, according to MIT. After about five or six days, as an embryo reaches a stage called a blastocyst, it will be cryogenically frozen for the trip home.
Researchers are highly focused and concerned about the effects zero-G forces will have on the embryos upon re-entry.
The experiment commences next November during a three-hour orbital experiment with the lab, done in tandem with German startup Atmos Space Cargo. Only after successful rodent tests will they move on to human testing.
This also comes at a time when, as commercial space flights become more common, so does the possibility of a big bang for passengers.
“You want to find this stuff out in a petri dish before you’ve got tourists getting pregnant in space,” biologist Kelly Weinersmith told the outlet.
“I feel like we definitely need this kind of research to be done,” said Weinersmith, who co-authored a book on space settlements called “A City on Mars.”
Further understanding of kids in space might very well depend on initiatives like this from the private sector. The US government seems to take less interest in the concept.
“The Human Research Program at NASA … they have an entire budget of like $130 million. Which is crap,” said Erik Antonsen, a consultant for the program. “And that’s the premier research group and funding that are out there.”
He called the low orbit IVF lab “a wonderful experiment if you can get the funding for it.”
Edelbroek too is in a position where he needs funding, according to MIT.
Previously, research on reproduction in space and its impacts on new life has been a very low priority, a September report by the US National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine shows.
It also calls for a boost in funding, citing reproductive research as one of the crucial points.
“We’ve got to know what happens over generations, because there are fundamental processes involved when an egg is produced, when sperm is produced, and when the new zygote — no matter what organism it is — begins to grow and develop,” said Robert Ferl, a co-chair on the group behind the report.
Essentially, he’s saying we need more tests than a group of eight Japanese medaka fish and salamanders that hatched onboard the Columbia space shuttle in 1994. Especially since, while they survived and went on to live normal lives on Earth, rats on a Soviet vessel in 1983 experienced several complications.
“Humanity has benefited all the time from expanding her comfort zone,” Edelbroek added. “And if you ask me, it’s good to continue to do that into space.”