I think it is more likely the mice have returned to another dimension before the Vogons arrive.
Murder in space: NASA orders astronauts to KILL cripples – then fire bodies back to Earth
After almost a month spent attached to the International Space Station, SpaceX's Dragon capsule has successfully returned to Earth. The podule, laden with science experiments including the bodies of 40 mice, is now on its way to NASA via ship. The capsule, which made a belated berthing with the ISS on February 23 thanks to a …
COMMENTS
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Tuesday 21st March 2017 02:29 GMT the Jim bloke
A fairly standard evil mastermind execution
1. break legs
2. provide treatment
3. blast into orbit
4. go through complex docking procedure
5. wait around for weeks
6. euthanize
7. return to earth in unmanned/unguarded capsule
... only question i have, is how did they get the sharks with frikkin' laser beams up there to perform the euthanisationingninging..
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Tuesday 21st March 2017 04:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
WHy????!!!!!!
I mean this is first degree mouseocide.
Someone seriously needs to page NIMH, what if one of these mice having been mutated by space radiation would have led in several tens of millenia to mice achieving sentience, and an entire new species being created?
(extra bonus points if anyone recognizes the sci-fi reference)
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Tuesday 21st March 2017 15:23 GMT Robert Carnegie
Re: WHy????!!!!!!
http://www.sectorgeneral.com/shortstories/theconspirators.html ?
In which laboratory mice in space become super intelligent - well, for mice. A little later, so does the ship's cat. They make peace. But they all know what Big Ones (that's us) do to laboratory mice...
Just in time, the Big Ones also become super intelligent, so the mice are saved. And the cat.
In the author's other stories, mammals in space, including us, generally don't become super intelligent, or at least not going by how the action goes.
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Tuesday 21st March 2017 08:29 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: The dark side
Indeed.
20 in each group - that is a relatively small statistic sample, especially if you consider that the breaking and especially splintering was probably not 100% reproducible in the exact manner. I hope they get good data out of it, though my (relatively educated) guess is that 100s of mice are to follow in order for this to be of any use.
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Tuesday 21st March 2017 08:42 GMT Unep Eurobats
Is this really necessary?
Maybe I'm just getting squeamish, but I can't believe that what's holding us back from conquering the solar system is the fact that we don't know what'll happen if someone breaks their leg half way to Mars.
And I'm sure there would have been some actual people with broken limbs who would have liked a free trip into space. The euthanising might have been a bit of a harder sell, mind.
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Tuesday 21st March 2017 10:31 GMT Another User
Re: Most expensive pointless biology experiment ever?
No control group on earth? Unlikely. So 40 more mice with the same condition. Killed on the exact same date. Preparing the mice went flawless in each instance? Maybe not. So a total of 100 mice. Monitoring by actual biologists should have been possible via a video link. Maybe somebody on board even got some training with the experiment before? A complete test run? Double the number.
Pointless? I doubt that. Gruesome? From an animals rights group perspective certainly.
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Tuesday 21st March 2017 12:53 GMT phuzz
Re: Most expensive pointless biology experiment ever?
"not being monitored in space by actual biologists"
Peggy Whitson has a Phd in Biochemistry, plus, all of the *nauts that worked with the experiment will have received extensive ground training in their on-orbit tasks.
The sample size isn't huge, but the ISS doesn't have much room, and surely it's better to start with a smaller scale experiment rather than killing off hundreds of mice just to find no changes.
And yes, there was/is a control group on the ground, being kept in the same conditions except for the gravity.
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Tuesday 21st March 2017 11:41 GMT TRT
Re: More research needed
They'll repeat the experiment with rats...
Staring out into the cold, dark, endless void of space, two pinholes of bright blue reflected back from the cupola window. A skeletal horse whinnied in impatience and stamped on the outside of the capsule; the shockwave broke the fragile wire holding the leg together, sending a foreleg spinning gently off into the cold infinity. Death sighed. "HUMANITY REALLY OUGHT TO LEARN TO KEEP ITS FEET ON THE GROUND" he muttered. His flesh and blood horse, Binky, would certainly perish on a job like this. Death knew about that sort of thing - it was, after all, his area of expertise.
A voice like fingernails on a blackboard, floated up from floor level, wherever that might be in this gravity less environment and interrupted his train of thought.
"SQUEAK?"
"DONE? GOOD. YES WE CAN GO NOW."
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Tuesday 21st March 2017 14:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Dinner table conversation
My sister is a neuroscientist at a well-known genetic research company. Her job is to order mice (from the UK - she's in California) with certain genetic traits, which she treats in various ways and then euthanizes and studies very thin slices of their brains under a microscope. These mice can cost thousands of dollars each. And there's the RMA process for the poor little buggers that don't survive the trip across the pond. Always entertaining dinner conversation, and I might add, a topic that can typically clear a room of diners within earshot in less than 20 minutes. Truly priceless.
Anonymous, cuz, you know, genetic research and drugs don't mix.
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Tuesday 21st March 2017 15:20 GMT Phukov Andigh
I still can't get over the "impossible" that's the bootnote here
when I was a youth, there were many "experts" well paid and respected in their fields, who with absolute certainty went to shoot down dreams of "space pirates" and other adventurers with the unshakeable belief that "space travel will always be handled by only large national governments" due to expense, infrastructure, etc.
Yet here again, almost to the level of "so commonplace the world pretty much ignores it" a private corporate company launched, orbitted, docked to a space station, and successfully retrieved a space capsule. A corporate entity that is only "paperwork" away from doing so with a manned vehicle!
I'm sitting here imaging a great middle finger to all those who said this would and could *never* happen. Something good of The Future we dreamt of, DID arrive in my lifetime!
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Tuesday 21st March 2017 16:01 GMT GrumpenKraut
Re: 'and to avoid putting them through the stress of reentry'
At launch their bones were still freshly broken. During orbit, things healed (more or less), adding potentially delicate new tissue at break point. Stress with reentry (or rather the possible reactions of the mice to this stress) might cause enough change/damage to invalidate result.
To the heroic mice ------>
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Tuesday 21st March 2017 19:46 GMT Cynic_999
Will it be interpreted correctly?
ISTM that if the healing is found to be different between the mice that stayed on Earth and the mice in space, there could be a number of reasons. Maybe the high G during the launch affected the injuries. Maybe low G affected it indirectly by making the animals space-sick so they didn't eat properly.
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Wednesday 22nd March 2017 10:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Will it be interpreted correctly?
Patience young Jedi.
First stage - hypothesis is that limbs heal differently in low G (for some reason - lack of stress, magic rays, whatever)
Test - carry out experiment to see if there is a difference in limb healing between on Earth and in space
Analysis - run stats on data - null hypothesis is rejected, there is a difference for better (or worse)
Second stage - hypothesis is that differences are not directly due to gravity but other factors
Test - carry out refined experiment to eliminate confounding factors
Analysis - run stats on data
etc
You don't spend this much time and money on an experiment that falls apart easily under light criticism. Well, you shouldn't...
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Wednesday 22nd March 2017 13:46 GMT lukewarmdog
I think what saddens me with this story is not that we sent broken limbed mice out to space then killed them for the return journey.
Nope what saddens me is that somewhere there is a a process document that describes (probably with pictures) how to break the legs of mice and how to repair those breaks. The appendix is a list of the brave mice that suffered and died, reduced to a project number and individual ids.
I'm not sure what they're simulating here either. If I broke my leg and was waiting for it to heal, you can bet any money the space shuttle company would not let me travel and no amount of me waving a newspaper cutting that said mice did it first would get me anywhere.