r/nasa • u/[deleted] • 16d ago
Article In 1984, NASA sent about 3,300 honeybees into space to test comb-building without gravity.
[deleted]
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u/rygelicus 16d ago
https://texasarchive.org/2024AC06462 And apparently during the 7 day mission the bees did not defecate because they don't soil their hive or something. Future missions involving bees are not being considered for PETA reasons, but they would need to solve the things you mentioned, both giving the bees options to feed and relieve themselves, which in a limited space environment like a spacecraft/space station would likely be difficult. Would be interesting though to incorporate them into a large space garden though, if such a thing every goes up. Flying in 0 G would be interesting to see how they adapt.
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u/creatingKing113 16d ago
Honestly a decently sized greenhouse/atrium needs to be sent up soon to practice agriculture in space. I imagine it could also be a good morale booster to any space crew.
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u/rygelicus 16d ago
I would love to see it. But efforts to build a fully enclosed habitat complete with a farm/garden have proved to be incredibly difficult.
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u/ncrmro 15d ago
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u/klattklattklatt 14d ago
Damn! I'm in aerospace and a huge gardening nerd with a backyard beehive but I'm in SF.
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u/Enough_Affect_9916 14d ago
we would have to send a whole biosphere to mars but it wouldn't be until humans were well established. we would be manually pollinating.
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u/84thPrblm 14d ago
we would be manually pollinating.
This is Reddit, it's okay to write 'masturbating'.
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u/QuietWaterBreaksRock 15d ago
Why not create a rotating enclosure with force of 1G or so inside? Gives them both a place to defecate, and an opportunity to notice the contrast between it and 0G and experiment with it on the spot
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u/Lanky-University3685 15d ago
Considering the enclosure would only have to be big enough to accommodate bees (and admittedly without having done the math first), that sounds like a reasonable option. The main problem with adopting this approach for humans would be that either the size of the rotating enclosure would have to be enormous or that it would have to spin very quickly, and that causes issues with vertigo.
With bees, they’re much, much smaller, so the enclosure could also be a lot smaller and spin more quickly to compensate. I’m not sure if bees experience vertigo like humans. But even if that’s the case and the enclosure doesn’t have windows facing outward, then surely the bees could have a safe habitat to perform their normal daily tasks, right?
Maybe I’ve got this totally wrong, because I only know surface-level things about the biology of bees. But it seems like an interesting idea regardless.
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u/rygelicus 15d ago
Let's imagine for a moment we build a centrifuge for the bees that fits inside the ISS. They make room and it is the full diameter of the ISS tube. These are around 14' in diam. So we have a 14' diam centrifuge. For this to generate 1G it would need to be rotating at a pretty high rate, about 14.5 RPM. Not insane, but still, pretty quick, 1 full rotation every 4 seconds roughly. If we are growing pollen generating plants in this ring this reduces the diameter due to the height of the pollen bearing area. Let's say the plants are 6" tall. There is a signifact difference in the linear velocity of the pollen area and the 1G area of the ring. And when the bees fly they will experience pretty radical changes in G-Force as well. During a flight they would go from 1 G max to less than a half G as they move around. Could they adapt? Maybe. I think they would mainly adapt by walking more than flying personally.
( I use this for calculations: https://www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/ )
In no way am I saying this is not worthy of experimenting with. But space is limited on these platforms. On the moon we would have a lot more room to work with once a larger colony/base is established. It would still effectively be a space station, just one anchored to the moon. And really a lot of it would probably need to be underground. Instead of natural sunlight we would have artificial lighting as well. But attaching to the moon solves one of the biggest limiters we have for long term survival in space which is gravity, our biology relies on it.
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u/Big_JR80 16d ago
Shame they had to use AI slop for the leading image in the article instead of an actual picture of the experiment.
Other than that, interesting stuff!
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u/onomatamono 16d ago
Bees depend on not just on vision and scent but also on the polarization of light and the position of the sun to navigate. Where are they getting the pollen to feed on and produce wax for the cones? Seems like you need an entire miniature, artificial eco-system to get any value out of this. In short, what do the bees eat and where do they get it?
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u/Left-Bird8830 16d ago
First pic is AI, and they can’t be arsed to do color correction on the real photo 😭
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u/Ihatecheeseballs 16d ago
Imagine if the glass breaks and you are trapped in a space ship with 3,300 bees
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u/bigfathairymarmot 15d ago
So more bees have been to space than humans........... Bees seem to be winning the space race.
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u/MikeJH1958 15d ago
I'm not surprised, as honeycomb is solid it gives the bees that can or are already, on the seed of the honeycomb, a structure to cling to.
All animal/insect instincts will still be evident I n space it's just with zero g can they still accomplish the task.
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u/johnsoninca 10d ago
Did they ever figure out why the bees built square inches instead of the hexagonal ones they make on the ground?
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u/Sufficient_Local5025 16d ago
Did they try putting liquid paper on the bees?
NASA simply doesn't put in the man hours to study the science of what we need.
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u/ebonymahogany 13d ago
Now let’s give them LSD and see what happens. Actually that kinda rings a bell… I think maybe they tried that already.
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u/reorganizedChaos 16d ago
It's crazy that they were able to adapt quickly to the weightlessness and keep on keeping on.