Author: kupkake

Astronaut:

Every time I go on a space mission I feel so lonely. Spending such a long amount of time with the same people can get boring and that just adds to the loneliness… I even read an article saying that loneliness can be worse than smoking! Well, maybe I can bring my pet cat, Kupkake, onto my next space mission, she always makes me feel happy!  

Person #1:

I don’t think that bringing a live animal in a spacecraft would be the best idea. (Astronaut makes confused face) We found a resource showing that a cat can not balance at all in zero gravity and can’t maneuver very well. Also on a spacecraft, you need to take into account how much things are going to weigh and with all the items a cat is going to need to survive,  it may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars!

Astronaut:

(Astronaut makes sad face) but.. my cat is the only thing that brings me joy anymore! There are even tests and studies that have been done that show people feel happier with pets… What shall I do…

Person #1:

Do not fear, technology is here! We present to you… remote controlled space cat toys!

Astronaut:

Ok… (Astronaut make confused face) but how does a remote controlled cat toy even work in space?

Person #1:

Well, astronauts would download an app that we designed. Then that app would allow them to control the cat toys and, from cameras that would be installed in the room with cats on earth, you can watch as cats with those toys! Here take a look. (gives app design to astronaut)

Astronaut:

(quickly flips through book) Wow – you came up with your own toy ideas, designed an app and even made a prototype! (motions to prototype). Can I see how it works?  

Person #1:

Sure! (hits button on toy to make catnip fall on cat)

Astronaut:

This is fantastic! But I don’t think I want to install these toys and a camera in my home…

Person #1:

Oh don’t worry we won’t make you install them in your home! We are going to install them in cat cafes!

Astronaut:

A cat what now?

Person #1:

A cat cafe! They are like any other cafe with food and drinks but they also have a separate room where you can play with adoptable pets! These cafes are perfect for these toys and the toys may even increase adoption rates so it would help the cafes as well as the astronauts!

Astronaut:

Wow – any idea on what this might cost?

Person #1:

We don’t have an exact price for the toys yet, but we were thinking 100 to 150 dollars each and the exploration company funding the mission could easily afford this price.  It is so much less than sending a live cat and supplies into space.

Astronaut:

Ok – I like what you have so far, but do you really think this would work? Would anyone really be interested in this?

Person #1:

Yes!  We talked to several experts about our idea and here is what some of them told us:

Jessica Burge the owner of the cat cafe, Café Meow said: “They would probably work great.  If you get a plan together on how we might be able to use them, we would love to see it.”

Tony Dreher, a retired Aerospace Engineer, said: “Just having something that connects pets to people sounds like a great idea.  I don’t know of anything like that right now.”

Astronaut:

if this is such a good idea, hasn’t it already been done?

Person #1:

Sort of, we did find a website for reach-in which is a company that came up some remote controlled cat toys. The company called their toys ipetcompanion. Their toys only can move with simple motions and there isn’t a lot of verity. They also aren’t made for space travel and can get repetitive and boring.  Our fun toys and app are a great step forward in interactive space fun!

Astronaut:

I love this!  This might even be better than taking a cat and it’s cat box in space!

Person #1:

We may never figure out how to successfully send live cats into space, but we do hope that our app design and remote controlled cat toys can become next best thing that can connect people and animals closer together and end the loneliness of space.

 

For the FIRST LEGO League competitions you need to have some sort of presentation prepared and so this is our team’s presentation. Enjoy!

 

Loneliness, a common problem on earth, but even more common in space. When having to spend long hours in close quarters with the same people, it can get lonely especially if you don’t get along well with your comrades or you don’t have much to do. Our team wanted to help solve this problem, so our first thought was ANIMALS IN SPACE.

Now, before we get ahead of ourselves, let us address some questions you may have like: what is so terrible about being lonely? Why does it matter? And, are there any current solutions to this problem? Well, my fellow Lego League friends, we found an article in the Wall Street Journal saying that loneliness can shorten your life worse than smoking can. That’s right WORSE THAN SMOKING. Now if that isn’t a reason to prevent loneliness in space I don’t know what is.

There are already some solutions to this problem like using virtual reality to help boredom and to feel more connected, but our team decided that we wanted to take a step further and use animals to help keep connections to earth strong.

Ok, now for the fun part ANIMALS. Animals have a way with people that just puts a smile on your face. There have even been studies and tests were done that show that most people feel happier and not as lonely with a pet, but it isn’t as simple as just sending an animal like a cat in space. You see there are a few bumps in the road. For example, we found a resource showing that a cat, which was the specific animal our team was thinking would be beneficial, can not balance at all in zero gravity and can’t maneuver very well. Also on a spacecraft, you need to take into account how much things are going to weigh.

According to Tony Dreher, an Aerospace Engineer, figuring out what an item will need to still be intact after the launch especially a live animal is time-consuming and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Cats also need food which is around a half cups a day, and for two years well that is about 100 pounds WHOA! Oh and don’t forget the water, litter, litter box and other items to keep them healthy, that is even more items you to test and even more money.

So we needed to come up with a solution for this. We can’t just send an animal in space so what can we do? Well, that is when we came across remote-controlled cat toys. They are toys that can be controlled from a mobile device and you can watch as cats play with that toy you are controlling. These toys, however, do have their limits. Scott Harris who works for Reach-in, the company that created these toys also known as ipetcompanion, said that the devices don’t have much variety to keep the cats and humans interested for long and their internet control is limited to simple motions. There also wasn’t any means to use catnip.

So what did we do? Well, we were brainstorming how we could make this more exciting and we came up with some ideas and even designed an app that space travelers or even people on earth could use .

We also thought that we could install these toy in cat cafes. Cat cafes are cafes with drinks and food like any other cafe, but have a separate room with adoptable cats that you can play with. This seems like a good match since there would be lots of cats ready to play! The website also says that it can increase adoption rates, so it would also benefit the cafe!

The toys cost about 100 to 150 dollars a toy, which would be a lot less than what you would have to pay for sending and testing to put an animal in space. We were also thinking that the space exploration company that was funding the mission could easily afford the money to pay for these toys.

We talked to several experts about our idea and here is what some of them told us:

Jessica Burge the owner of the cat cafe, Café Meow said: “They would probably work great.  If you get a plan together on how we might be able to use them, we would love to see it.”

Tony Dreher, a retired Aerospace Engineer, said: “Just having something that connects pets to people sounds like a great idea.  I don’t know of anything like that right now.”

We may never figure out how to successfully send live cats into space, but we do hope that our app design can become next best thing that can connect people and animals closer together and end the loneliness of space.

Loneliness in space is a huge problem as you already know fro previous posts, but we found more  research that supports this claim. We found a couple websites that say more about loneliness. One very important fact that we found was that loneliness can shorten your life even more than smoking can!

Here is a quote from one of the websites:

“Nevertheless, reports from astronauts who have described their experiences on long space flights suggest it is extremely important to maintain your emotional ties to the ground. A few pictures from home, a response on Twitter or a quick chat with an amateur radio enthusiast can make all the difference to an astronaut’s mood. It helps that all NASA communications with the ISS are through individuals known as capsule communicators. These are usually fellow astronauts who are well placed to understand what their comrades in space are going through.”

–http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130813-how-to-combat-loneliness-in-space 

Here is another website we found:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-loneliest-generation-americans-more-than-ever-are-aging-alone-11544541134?mod=mhp

Tony Dreher’s experience:

His projects include maintenance of the Hubble Telescope.  Worked on creating telephone booth sized instruments that got plugged into the telescope.  Four different missions delivered updated hardware and software.

New space craft James Web Space Telescope mirror system.  Scheduled for launch in 2020 to 2021.  Five year project developing new telescope to replace the Hubble space telescope.

How hard is it to get stuff into space?

Very hard,  very hard to do.  Extremely hard to get things in space, we spend a lot of time and money developing hardware to get things in space.  Key testing includes vibration and acoustic testing as well as Thermal and environment testing.  This can take several years to get something approved for launch.

Would it be feasible to get a live animal in space?

Yes – probably.  First space flights were animals.  Some came back alive.  These were test subjects.

Would it be feasible to have a pet in space?

Don’t know, probably require a lot of testing.  Would be very expensive.  Would need to test just to if the animal might survive launch and in-space survival.  Cats might not work well without some sort of gravity.  Just the testing would be very difficult and involved.  You need to do the most you can with the least you send up.  Each pound costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to launch into space.  A lot of money  and time is spent simply trimming weight from hardware items.  It seems like it might be hard to justify the weight of live pets.

Pets in space may be feasible, but the cost and difficulty would not be a high enough goad to pursue.

What about a live feed with remote controlled cat toys?

Yes – that definitely could happen.  A robotic cat in space that mimics what the real one does would be cool.  Just having something that connect pets to people sounds like a great idea.  I don’t know of anything like that right now.

We emailed Scott Harris who works for reach-in that has remote controlled devices for the internet along with very simple cat pet toys.  They don’t have much variety to keep the cats and humans interested for long.  Their internet control is limited to simple motions and not any way to program activity for the cats or the humans.  There also wasn’t any means to use catnip!

Their website is:

https://www.reach-in.com/

We also went to several pet stores and found no remote controlled options, but a wide variety of non-remote controlled options.

Space travel can cause people to feel lonely or home sick especially when it is a long trip.

Here are some websites that talk more in depth about the affects of long term space flights:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_and_sociological_effects_of_spaceflight#Psychosocial_and_psychiatric_issues_during_an_expedition_to_Mars

https://web.mit.edu/16.459/www/Palinkas.pdf

There is a lot of research out that about how pets are good for your health.  Here are just a few things that we found:

https://www.care2.com/greenliving/5-reasons-cats-make-you-feel-better.html

https://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/features/6-ways-pets-improve-your-health#1

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/201007/pets-are-good-us-where-science-and-common-sense-meet

https://www.somepets.com/15-pictures-that-will-make-you-feel-better/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2013854/Why-owning-pet-makes-happier-likely-live-longer.html

We personally think that cats are even better than other pets (like dogs):

https://www.thesprucepets.com/why-cats-are-better-than-dogs-554880

The results are in! We had 50 responses in total. Out of those 50, 34 people already had a cat, that’s 74%! Most people felt happy with their pets. Most people as well said that videos of cats still make them feel happy. This shows that if we were to design an app that allows astronauts to control electronic cat toys that cats will be able to play with and the astronauts can watch the cats, it might give them a more happy space trip.

For a detailed look at the data, here is a link to our survey results:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/stories/SM-Q3ZG7S88/

This was our interview with Jessica Burge owner of the Café Meow in Minneapolis:

Q:  Why did you start the Café Meow

A: To help cats and help make people happy.  People seem to like to be around the cats and we can help get the cats from shelters new homes.

Q: What do people thing of the Café Meow?

A: Seems to make people happy, some people are disappointed that there is a cost to be with the cats.

Q: Do you think the cats like it here:

A: Yes – they seem very happy.  Sometimes there is a shy one that we need to send back.

Q: Have you thought of Remote Controlled toys?

A: Yes,  but they were too expensive for how we would use them.  But they would probably work great.  If you get a plan together on how we might be able to use them we would love to see it.

We went back to Cafe Meow to see the cats one more time. We took this trip on November 11th 2018. We got to see cats in an environment that might work for our idea. We also got to talk to some experts that work their.

Here are some images from the trip: