Nobody needs to know anything about living in zero gravity because we will never be able to do it, and there is no possiblly justifiable reason to even try. All this prolonged foolishness with the ISS is diverting billions and billion of dollars from legitimate space research involving more and better robots and telescopes.

Please remember that this whole idiotic idea about going back to the moon and then to Mars came from none other than George W. Bush – what more proof does one need for the abject uselessness of manned space travel?

Oh, besides that?

Well… lots of cash to be made. That's the whole point of private industries, space or otherwise: to make cash.

So unless there's some relatively short-term economic benefit in permanent space usage, they won't do anything. And it has to be something with a HUGE economic value, to compensate for the equally HUGE spending space stuff enthrails.

Nowdays, the mantra seems to be orbital tourism. I don't know if we have enough grossly wealthy people around to pay the humongous bills space tourism generates and turn it into a sustainable business, though. I'm rather skeptical about it, in fact. It might work for a few years, maybe a decade, but once they run out of adventurous billionares, things might sour pretty fast.

Nobody needs to know anything about living in zero gravity because we will never be able to do it, and there is no possiblly justifiable reason to even try. All this prolonged foolishness with the ISS is diverting billions and billion of dollars from legitimate space research involving more and better robots and telescopes.

Please remember that this whole idiotic idea about going back to the moon and then to Mars came from none other than George W. Bush – what more proof does one need for the abject uselessness of manned space travel?

@Ian:

Well, yes, you're right. I'm fully convinced that the interviewer and the interviewee had all the best intentions. I'm also fully convinced that they didn't think what they said and did had international ramifications. I also think, however, that that's exactly where the problem lies, and I can't help imagining the massive outcry that we'd hear around here if it had been, say, a Russian educator being interviewed for, say, the website of the St. Petersburg university who called the ISS a "national asset". Righfully so, I might add.

People everywhere should realize that everything they do when dealing with international endeavours has international ramifications. Everything. By definition.

Still, giving the trolls a little cookie so they won't go home too sad and hungry, lemme add that wereas this might be seen by some as an awfully expensive way to provide educational materials for a small number of kids, the project does have merit and scientific relevance in itself, so I'm totally fine with it. We do need to understand much better than we do now how other species develop in zero-G, if we want to have some day more self-sustainable habitats in Earth's orbit or beyond.

(note to self: hey, it was just a cookie!)

Now we monitor some bugs in LEO aboard a collection of tin cans that cost $10 billion.

NASA doesn't have a clue how to really excite the public about something that should be naturally enthralling.

Jorge…
Actually, the ISS is a bunch of NATIONAL ASSETS connected together to form the ISS. Get over yourself already…. this must be about the 5th time you've been told so. Its amazing how someone can take a public venture for public affairs and rip it apart as some personal attack on their nationality.

@Jorge:- I can see how you've interpreted what was said in the interview, but I don't see where the problem is. The interview was published in a US university website about a US project for US students. In this case, I think "national asset" is a good description. The interviewee didn't think the project had any international ramifications, and as NASA funded the study, it reinforces the "national" thing. I doubt they thought it would cause an international dispute when it went to print…

Cheers, Ian

The point is: the thing came to fruition through international cooperation from the start. It's not something like the indian lunar probe, which has lots of input and instruments from ESA but was developped as an indian project, under indian supervision. The ISS has always been international, involving all the major space agencies in the world at the time of the decision to go forward (with the exception of the chinese… which in truth weren't that much of a spacefaring nation back then). Even countries that do not take a direct part in it are indirectly involved – some non-participating ESA members, for instance. Therefore, I think it's of very, very bad taste to go "national" on it. This kind of attitude can only damage the project. People really should leave nationalism in the closet when dealing with such intrinsically international endeavours.

Call it an asset, by all means. But don't call it a "national" asset.

Well, it is kinda a "national" asset. It's an asset to all nations involved in the international effort to fund the thing.

Assuming all things are fair and equal with the ISS (although that can probably be debated), all the nations involved should view the station as an asset. BioServe will probably have an advantage when getting payloads onboard shuttle flights (as it is NASA funded), but I'm sure similar programs can be carried out by the other partner states.

More educational flights is what I say! Plus see fish swim in microgravity! (Thanks Ron for that idea)

Cheers, Ian

Oh, that must be what the butterflies are for.

This program is an excellent example of using a national asset like the International Space Station

'Scuse me? An international space station is a national asset now? Is this a great attitude or what?

The Planetary Society, which is running this experiment, wants to see if the theory that microbes could survive being transferred from one world to another via meteoroids is true.

I'm almost worried that they will die fairly quickly.

One thing to consider is that there is less gravity (not really none, animals tend to be able to detect even the smallest changes in things) up there, so the spiders could easily grow larger, if they are fed more than usual that is.
And they generally don't care much for up or down, in fact, i would be surprised if they had any sense of up and down, besides falling from stuff.
They are so small, and so light, with their sticky feet, they'll just tend to act as normal.
I just wonder how they will build webs.

As for the butterflies, when they start flying, they will soon learn to adapt to the fact that there is no gravity keeping them down.
But they tend to move around awkwardly, so not sure how they will move around. with precision.
I can see a lot of "falling out" between them.