It would seem that if we are serious about going to Mars, we need to have canines who can adapt to life there. So has anyone subject suitable breeds to astronaut/cosmonaut training?
I would think that getting a dog used to zero G would be a challenge…has anyone tried it?
I fail to see the logic of this. Why? Please elaborate.
And what does adapting to Mars have to do with the ISS, anyway?
I don’t think taking a dog for a ride on the Vomit Comet is going to be a pleasant experience.
I don’t see how having a dog on an extended space mission would necessarily be a good thing… and I like dogs. What’s in it for the dog?
This. Do it just once, and it will forever after be known as the Dogshit Comet.
You need a dog to round up the electric sheep.
How would a dog get around in zero g anyway? Don’t you need hands to pull yourself around?
You’d just end up with the dog barking at the hatch when the resupply mission comes.
Are you kidding? That would be a buffet for a dog.
You don’t need hands to get around, you need hands to stay put. You can push off of things to get from point A to point B, but if you want to hang around point B, you need to be able to grab something there.
Housetraining would be interesting. You can’t just install a doggy door.
What about walking them?
“Jane!!! Stop this crazy thing!”
We’ve already sent several Rovers to Mars.
Factual answer: no space program has or plans to train dogs as service animals for use on the ISS or for a hypothetical crewed interplanetary mission, nor would it be sensible to do so. The Soviet Union used dogs as test subjects as a precursor to human spaceflight because they are cheap (Laika, the first mammal in orbit, was a mongrel found on the streets of Moscow), easily trained and conditioned, and had a large body of prior experimental work with vivisectioning and physiological response which supported their use in space experiments. The United States preferred using spider and rhesus monkeys, and eventually chimpanzees because the primates were more representative of human physiological response and could be trained to use controls, but the animals often posed behavioral difficulties and were not as hardy.
Dogs, or any other quadruped, would make a poor service animal either in freefall conditions or on crewed interplanetary missions. They lack grasping appendages to help them move around, are not able to use human toilet facilities, and designing a functional pressure suit would be an enormous challenge not withstanding the fact that it would not enable them to use their most useful senses effectively (olfactory and auditory). Primates may seem better suited but anyone who has worked with or owned primates as pets can attest to the difficulty of getting them to do what you want of them at all times; a howling, shit-throwing, button-pushing monkey is unlikely to be a useful or desired companion on board a spacecraft or space station, and they will suffer the same (or similar) physiological problems that human astronauts experience with loss of bone density, macular degeneration, and muscle mass.
In fact, the most adaptable creatures are probably those already well adapted to a quasi-freefall environment, e.g. those that live in the ocean. From that standpoint, the cephalopods are probably one of the most logical choices as a service animal in a space environment with their acclimation and grasping mobility, albeit with the attendant difficulties of training and controlling such a creature as well as providing the necessary aquatic conditions in both a pressurized habitat or in a pressure/environment garment.
Stranger
Checking weighlessness on a cat.
How the hell did it not scratch the pilots eyes out just by being stuck in a cockpit of a plane, with all the attendant noise.
Now I’m imagining an octopus on the ISS wearing some kind of helmet that allows it to breathe water. And I’m going to be disappointed if NASA doesn’t do it in my lifetime.
Sure, but someone has to make sure the humans don’t start pushing the buttons.
What’s the point of going somewhere if you can’t take your dog?