Friday, February 05, 2010

Worms in Space?

I saw this story in the Express Thursday morning, but I'm copying this text from the Baltimore Sun:

Iran announced Wednesday it launched a menagerie of animals - including a mouse, two turtles and worms - into space on a research rocket, a feat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said showed Iran could defeat the West in the battle of technology.

The brief article concludes with this:

To test a life-support system of use to humans, "the obvious choice would be to send a monkey," said James Lewis, senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Worms in space serve no purpose."

Am I the only person who thought that Iran got this wrong but for an entirely different reason than what James Lewis suggests? If you're going to send worms, turtles and a mouse into space, why not pigs?



For folks in the DC area, let's hope we make it through the Blizzard of the Decade!

4 comments:

Nichole Fisher said...

Ha ha - as soon as I read the title of the post all I could picture was "Pigs in Space".

Brendon said...

Well, I misread the title at first and wondered why Women in Space would be newsworthy.

Sexism aside, hasn't the West gone beyond sending mice, turtles, and worms into space? I'm not a scientist, but isn't sending a human into space more technologically difficult than a 9 year old's pets?

Gilahi said...

I'm guessing it's because Muslims don't have much to do with pigs. Dietary laws and all that.

Sean said...

Nichole - Great minds think alike.

Hand of Godard - Women is space would have been a completely different post! I agree with you about Iran's space program though.

Gilahi - Great point. Plus, they may not know the Muppets.