Iwatani Giken is hoping to bring manned space travel to the masses, and the experiment was designed to give would-be consumers confidence.
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Seems like a gimmick to me, at the hamsters expense (even though it survived)
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Wind In The Willows #2 perhaps?
If that article is true - it is very cruel. What gives humans the right to treat animals in this way.
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Well exactly…he says he did it to appeal to the masses? Why not send people then? I doubt very much any animal would willingly choose to go to space, for goodness sake. 
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I agree with you a million fold, Tabs.
Do you remember many years ago when the evil Russians sent that poor dog into space?
What must have been going through that animal’s mind in that thing, and how did he feed, drink, and toilet? He must have been stressed out of his mind.
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You saying that, Mups, made me go and check google and I found this. Apparently everyone has thrown all manner of animals into space! This is actually horrifying, I never even knew!
I can’t tell you how much I loathe these people who think it’s perfectly acceptable to experiment with the lives of these animals, even more so with group/pack species that are not ‘wired’ for a solitary existence, let alone be plunged into alien and unnatural circumstances alone. Grrr . . . .
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I vote for those waiting to run the country to be next to be shot errrm into space i mean.
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It breaks my heart to think how those poor creatures must have felt. So frightened and confused. I really can’t bear to think about it.
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Oh I know…its the people who think its a great idea, they are the ones who should go!
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Not even remotely clever let alone funny.
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BUT at least that served an essential scientific purpose in learning about the effect on a mammal of zero gravity, accelerations, and effect of radiation whereas what was done to that hamster added nothing to scientific knowledge at all. It was just plain cruel.
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I’m not keen on the idea of sending animals into space, but which of you would volunteer to take hamsters place?
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I really don’t think general space travel or inhabiting other planets is even an option, so I don’t see the point of it at all 
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It’s in our nature Pixie…“To boldly go where no man has gone before”
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But they are not boldly going.They are sending someone else.
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Something else…
Animals are people to me.
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Don’t read the story of Laika if you don’t want to get angry.
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