QUESTION:
Is it possible that without gravity to crush the trachea of insects such
as the grasshopper, when they get to be a certain size, they could grow
to an astronomical size?

ANSWER from Michael Wiederhold on April 27, 1998:
I hope the insects wouldn't grow to "atronomical" size.  But, since
they're "astrobugs", who knows?  In fact we will have some answers next
week when Neurolab lands.  Dr. Eberhard Horn, from the University of Ulm,
Germany, has cricket eggs and larvae developing on this flight.  I believe
Dr. Marc Tischler of the University of Arizona Health Center in Tucson has
flown beetles on several shuttle flights.  I suspect that a structure as
small as an insect's trachea would be much more influenced on the ground
by internal supporting structures than by gravity, so the removal of
gravity is not likely to have major effects on its development, but we
have found some differences in the gravity sensing organs in animals
developed in space that we could not have predicted before the flights, so
one must keep an open mind but temper speculations by what the physical
forces might be and how great an effect gravity, or its removal, could be
expected to exert.  We have to do our physics and math before can make
rational predictions about what would happen in Space!