A website full of cats :3
We found a website that shows technology that can connect electronic cat toys to devices (tables, phones, ect.) and allows you to control the toys and watch the cats play with them even though you aren’t there in person. We were thinking maybe we could use this technology in space so that the astronauts are less lonely, but don’t need to worry about taking care of the cats.
Here is a link to the website that talks about the electronic toys:
We created a survey to see what pets people have and how they feel around them so we can get a better understanding of how humans and pets behave together. This will also help us create our project.
Here is a link to the survey (you can take it if you want to):
Since we still think that interacting with a live cat would be beneficial for space travel, we looked into other ways to have the people interact with cats other than the cats on the shuttle. We found that cat Cafés might be a good place to work with. Cat cafés are places where you can meet and interact with adoptable cats. There is also a separate room to get a drink or snack. We went to a cat café in Minneapolis to see more about cat cafés and get to meet all the cute cats!
Here is a website that talks more about cat cafés:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_caf%C3%A9
Here is a website to the café we went to:
In addition to cats not liking zero gravity they also need to eat and drink. This adds to the difficulty to maintain a healthy cat while in space. This would be even more challenging on a long trip like to the planet Mars. The average cat would eat around 1/2 cup of dry cat food a day which over the course of about two years would be around 360 cups of dry food. That would be about 100 pounds! This doesn’t even count for the water, litter or other items the cat would need to survive.
Here is a link to a website that tells you how much food you should feed a cat:
We went to investigate space and the solar system at the Minnesota Science museum on August 9th , 2018. They also had a LEGO exhibit that shows different structures and creations you can make only using the small plastic bricks. We had a fun time watching the movie in the Omni theater as well that talked about different engineers and how just an idea can turn into reality.
On 8/23/2018 our team talked with an Engineer from Ball Aerospace about the challenges of space engineering. Her projects have included:
What we talked about:
Link to Ball Aerospace:
Our first though as a team for our project was to have cats in space, so that people would feel more comfortable and connected. Sounds like a great idea, right? Well, after some “extensive” research and we found a video showing cats in zero gravity…
As it turns out cats have a terrible sense of balance with no gravity and cant land on their feet. So either we will have to fix this CATastrophic, or find a new project idea.