Talk:Operation Century/@comment-26323407-20150420023250

I have really mixed feelings on this pasta. On one hand, do I think the evolutions you've posed could come to pass (a thing I feel is necessary for this kind of pasta--if they were all just little green men now it'd lose all impact)? I totally do. I'm not so sure about the wolves, but rabbits becoming more or less aquatic to "swim" in zero gravity? Totally. If you think about it, it's not only plausible but likely. Hopping legs would be no use to them at all. And do I think our government might undertake such experiments? Not only yes, but they already have. Early space experiments involved sending up animals because if they couldn't survive in space then neither could we, and as the possibility of space colonization opens up, this is the kind of research they may wish to have again.

But then on the other hand there's what I know of the scientific method and space (none of this is heavy studying, either--it's all high-school stuff), and it just. . . it doesn't jive with what's in this story at all. No cameras or audio equipment onboard to monitor ongoing evolution and progress for an entire century? How did the whole world not know this massive thing was being built and launched (the narrator speaks of "hundreds" of wolves, to say nothing of the rabbits and other animals--this theoretical terrarium would have to be multiple miles square, and most of the wolves would still end up killing each other), especially given that you say it floats between earth and moon and so at some point must have been noticed by amateur astronomists? For that matter, the animals aboard would be hopelessly inbred by the time the narrator arrived; it would be really hard to say what changes would be the result of the zero-grav environment and what had come about from inbreeding and the resultant genetic mutations (and the mutations we could reasonably expect from the higher-radiation atmosphere of space). And how, in the vacuum of space, are they getting their air? Photosynthesis seems the obvious answer, but it relies on the majority of the outside of the terrarium being some kind of translucent or transparent material through which sunlight can travel, and such a material would never survive launch. Space shuttles have extremely small windows precisely because pressure and temperature differences would shatter larger ones.

It's a great story if you don't think about it, but there are loads of objections to such an experiment, including "it flat-out breaks every rule of the scientific method multiple times." 6/10.