SpaceLife Origin, a Netherlands-based company, hopes to send a pregnant woman to space in 2024 to give birth there, The Atlantic reports. Why would they wish to do this?
Egbert Edelbroek, one of the company’s executives, says spacefaring childbirth is part of creating an insurance policy for the human species. Should a catastrophe someday render Earth unlivable—climate change, Edelbroek suspects—he hopes the human species will move off-world and settle elsewhere. Wherever they land, they will plant roots, build homes, and start families.
“Human settlements outside of Earth would be pretty pointless without learning how to reproduce in space,†Edelbroek says.
To our knowledge a pregnant woman has never been in space, and certainly no human has been born in space. The Atlantic points out that rats born in space during an experiment had an unexpected issues.
In the 1990s, pregnant rats gave birth after a week on a U.S. space-shuttle mission. Each rat pup was born with an underdeveloped vestibular system, the inner-ear structure that allows mammals to balance and orient themselves. As scientists suspected, the absence of gravity had thrown the pups off-kilter. The animals’ sense of balance recovered not long after birth, but the lesson was clear: Animal infants need gravity.
Would you volunteer for this?