3 ms·
> The remaining eight mice are euthanized and preserved (formalin, ethanol or MELFI) for return to Earth to be weighed in order to ensure the mice have not lost
by yorwba 3y ago
> The remaining eight mice are euthanized and preserved (formalin, ethanol or MELFI) for return to Earth to be weighed in order to ensure the mice have not lost weight over the course of their stay aboard the Rodent Habitat which will confirm that the supply of water and food was sufficient.
At first I thought "shouldn't you weigh them before altering their weight with preservatives?" but then I remembered that this is in a zero-g environment, making weighing mice a bit more difficult than on Earth. Maybe a "space scale" measuring inertial mass instead could work?
- nwiswell 3y ago> Maybe a "space scale" measuring inertial mass instead could work? Yeah. The obvious thing would be a centrifuge where the sample is placed in a "ball on a wire" contraption, the assembly is spun up to a known RPM, and the tension in the wire is measured directly.
- amomchilov 3y agoI thought they could measure it like they measure humans using SLAMMD, but apparently that’s only accurate to 0.5 lbs https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/how-do-astronauts-weigh-themselves-space-180953884/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/how-do-ast...
- jameshart 3y agoAs the Mythbusters almost said, the only difference between whirling a mouse's corpse around tied to the end of a string in space, and science, is writing it down.
- marcosdumay 3y agoI imagine one can build a two-plated centrifuge that works the same way as an equilibrium balance works on Earth.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- troyvit 3y agoYou could maybe power it with the surviving mice and a piece of cheese floating on a string.
- insaneirish 3y agoIf you add a known fixed mass of preservative, then it's just some math back on earth...