Because spiders don't live very long?

AWWWW! She was a cutie!

(But not if you were a micro-size fruit fly. farking yikes!)

And so it begins...

As someone who lives in DC, I'm betting the death was traffic related.

Simple. That's not the spider that went up.

Earth germs killed the space-spider. Their original plan foiled, soon the race of space-spiders will send robot spiders to invade instead.

/Oh, and spider!

The spider got messages from nefarious space spiders, and died to keep the info secret.

She's in the great water spout in the sky now.

Meh.

Peacock Spiders > Space Travel Spider 

From the article it sounds like NASA did its job in getting it to and back from orbit. I think the congressional inquiry needs to be questioning the Smithsonian.

NASA starts to weave a tangled web

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

"spider at the center of an experiment conceived by an Egyptian student" Well that right there appears worth researching.

Just pray to your god that it did not bite anybody and cause another reboot of spiderman.

The spider never went to the space station and was going to talk.

I'm guessing she was in baggage handled by United Airlines?

That is an easy one to answer. Humans. Seriously, allow a human to handle anything and it will inevitably get farked up.

This is why I come to Fark. While not a game changing experiment, it's actually an interesting question that dot answered and probably one that'll really matter once we start building self sustaining environments in space.

GungFu: Meh.

Peacock Spiders > Space Travel Spider 

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Oh, wow. I'd only seen the fourth pattern before, didn't know there was so much variety!

xxmedium: I'm guessing she was in baggage handled by United Airlines?

I was going to say the US Postal Service, but the idea is the same.

"The Johnson jumping spider..." All spiders that jump on johnsons should get one-way trips to Mars.

GungFu:

Peacock Spiders

Very cool!

i, for one, want to welcome our insect overlords.

//i know spiders don't equal insects

And an evil Russian spider with a poison-tipped umbrella strolled away with an air of nonchalance.

This is an outrage. I demand that John McCain investigate this obvious coverup.

The spider knew too much

Did subby read the article? The spider survived the trip to DC, it just died a few days after getting to the Smithsonian. Maybe it had morals and the proximity of so many politicians was too much for it.

I said I would kill that Spider, man.

Academia can kill anything of value

It's obvious...she died from eating just one more wafer-thin mint.

Easy. There were no humans in outer space.

She got back here and *squish*.

cretinbob: Because spiders don't live very long?

Came here to say that. Ten months for a small jumping spider is about 70 years for a human, give or take. They should have taken a tarantula instead; some species can live 20 years or more.

arashinogarou: cretinbob: Because spiders don't live very long?

Came here to say that. Ten months for a small jumping spider is about 70 years for a human, give or take. They should have taken a tarantula instead; some species can live 20 years or more.

That would also spawn four or five movies exploring the idea of the spider getting lost on the station, getting offspring because (a) she was pregnant when launched (b) got impregnated by space spiders (c) aliens, and possibly getting mutated because (a) radiation (b) scientific nonsense about swelling up in a vacuum or lack of gravity (c) aliens.

And then come the not-half-as-good sequels with B-list stars because the original A-list cast moved on.