First space-born baby

When do you think will the first baby be born in space? Or will it be on the Moon, Mars, ...?

Until they get a base set up somewhere, moon or mars, I don't think it will be till then, when ever that may be........

Iain
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http://kiwi2space.blogspot.com

Well after, people wil be too scared to risk it early on!
Id imagine a decade or so into propper colognisation. Real people working and living not just working. And even if the baby was conceived in space, who would stay in space and have it when the likelyhood is Earth will be a day or so away.

Id say 2080 - 2120 and not near Earth, medics would have a lady on the moon or earth orbit sent home. Would have to be Mars area

Medics say that it is "easier" to get a baby in micro-gravity but I guess that is something to be "tested" first to be sure.

About "tests": after rumors the pre-"work" to a birth already happened.

Limited research already done with baby rats in space shows that they cannot develop normally in zero gravity. So unless we want defective children, births will have to be on a planet with enough gravity. Is 1/6 enough? 1/3? Nobody knows. The consensus guess is 1/3 might be enough but 1/6 is not. So there is no way it will be before 2030. I hesitate to say never, because that includes 10,000 years from now, but it will be way WAY farther in the future than 2030.

About rumors.. heard something about Rob wanting to make a study about these tests....

Well i would have wanted to but as you describe it as "Work" perhaps illl give it a miss! Wasnt there a story lately about the first animals to be born in space? has that developed further?

They are doing fine.. we had a few stories about them.

No animals have ever been born in space. Some baby rats were sent up with their mothers, but they were born on Earth. And when the baby rats returned they could not even roll over 6 months after returning. They also could not swim, which rats normally do quite well. They never develop normal abilities to move in gravity if they are in zero gravity during the critical develoment phase just after birth.

Sorry, did you mean just before birth?

All in all, I imagine the first termination in space will happen before the first birth. Not one of the more celebrated milestones.

EDIT: Not to mention the first instance of space cannibalism. It's going to be tough before it's idyllic.

sorry i got confused with
http://spacefellowship.com/News/?p=3436

No I really did mean AFTER birth. Development does not end at birth. Depending on what animal we are talking about, different abilities develop AFTER birth. Marsupials are born almost totally undeveloped by mammal standards and must complete most of their development in the pouch. Human babies cannot walk when born but deer and other heard animals can. Rats (and cats and dogs too) are born blind and only develop sight after birth. In the experiments I refer to, they launched rats that could already see, but they couldn't walk or swim yet. Upon return to Earth, and for 6 months after that, they could not swim or walk or even roll over on their own. I do not know what happened after 6 months, but 6 months to a rat is probably like 5 or 10 years to a human.

Hi Rob.
I was not aware of the insects born is space before, but of course that is far different from a human or even a rat.

Sorry, my bad. I had 'No animals have ever been born in space' stuck in my head and couldn't see how we knew what effect 0g had just after birth. I completely missed the significance of the middle 3 sentences. The answer was right there in the baby rats going up with their moms. I was not subjected to 0g just after birth, so I have no excuse for this blunder.

Of course the 3+ G's they underwent to get to orbit may have been part of the issue too. I wonder if a control group was put through that stress in a centrifuge earthside?

Maybe they should have done that before deciding it was a worthwhile payload.