2023-10-24 09:07:03
What happens if a woman becomes pregnant during a space tourism trip? What if one day, the human species settles on Mars? SpaceBorn United attempts to answer these questions that you are probably not asking yourself.
Elon Musk intends to make us a “multi-planetary” species. And he can count on a Dutch startup which is actively working on the subject. SpaceBorn United aims to test whether humans can reproduce properly in space. Next year, the young company plans to attempt in vitro fertilization in orbit. This first trip concerns rodent embryos, but within 3 or 4 years the company hopes to reproduce the same experiment on human cells.
“Humanity needs a backup plan,” says Egbert Edelbroek, CEO of SpaceBorn United in the columns of MIT Technology Review. “If you want to be a sustainable species, you have to be a multi-planetary species.” On the startup’s website with its science-fiction-inspired aesthetic, we can read grandiloquent slogans like “Cherishing the miracle of life is our goal” or “enabling our children to explore new worlds.” Beyond the fairly distant deadline for the colonization of space. SpaceBorn believes it meets a much more urgent need: space tourism. According to Egbert Edelbroek, it is very likely that one day a baby will be conceived in space or that a pregnant woman will stay on board a station, and no one is sure how that might happen. Researchers (aside from SpaceBorn) have recently become concerned due to the fact that the space tourism industry does not take this problem sufficiently into consideration (including in relation to the effectiveness of contraceptive methods).
Space-born fish are doing well, thanks
Several experiments have already been carried out on animals. Some are rather reassuring. All stages, from mating to birth, took place normally. This was the case for 8 fish born in space in 1994 and whose behavior seemed normal upon their return to earth. Others turned out less well. In the 1980s, rats who had spent their third trimester of pregnancy in space had complications during childbirth; all of the babies in one of the litters died at birth, certainly due to the The mother’s exhaustion following her trip into space. Much later, remind us The Conversation, researchers analyzed mouse embryos that traveled into space during the Chinese SJ-10 mission. They noted an alteration of the embryos, particularly at the genetic level.
The goal of SpaceBorn is to further research to identify which stage of the reproduction process may cause problems. The company has therefore put in place a whole roadmap for its ARTIS (assisted reproductive technology in space) program. It can be viewed on his website. After performing IVF on rodents in 2024, she plans to try to cryogenically freeze an embryo ( once more rodent) a year later, then reproduce the same steps on humans in the following years…
For the moment SpaceBorn has “only” obtained $400,000 in funds. Of course, this is quite little compared to the billions raised by companies specializing in generative AI at the moment. Generally speaking, medical research in space ultimately raises relatively little public funds, notes MIT Technology Review.
A controversial project
The SpaceBorn project might seem lunar and unrelated to current concerns. But it nevertheless corresponds to a trend of thought in Silicon Valley: long-termism. This ideology from the University of Oxford intends to do everything to make humanity prosper for as long as possible and protect very distant future generations, even if it means sacrificing part of current humanity. According to the long-term project, this expansion of our species must take place beyond planet Earth.
However, not everyone is delighted with the SpaceBorn project. Dorit Donoviel, a researcher specializing in health in space, is particularly concerned regarding the human IVF experiment that the startup plans to carry out. Even if fertilization works, the embryos will then have to return to Earth, and undergo significant gravitational accelerations. She judges that this type of research is unethical and might harm all space research by affecting public opinion.
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#humans #animals #reproduce #space
