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Spinnen nutzen Informationen ihres Körpergewichtes oder des Windes, um ihre Netze zu bauen. Wenn aber Schwerkraft fehlt, können Sie dann noch immer ihre Netze spinnen? Ein Versuch aus dem Jahr 1973 zeigte, dass Spinne ihre Netze auch in Schwerelosigkeit anfertigen können.

The experiment flew aboard the Skylab 3 mission and proved that spiders could still spin webs in microgravity.

The experiement was designed to measure motor response, an indication of the functioning of the central nervous system. Drugs such as stimulants and sedatives affect the nervous system by causing degradation of certain motor responses. In an effort to study the effects of drugs, researchers have often utilized spiders as test subjects. The geometrical structure of the web of an orb-weaving spider provides a good measure of the condition of its central nervous system.

After reading an article in the National Geographic magazine describing the behavior of the spider, Miles suggested a study of the spider's behavior while weightless. Since the spider senses its own weight to determine the required thickness of web material and uses both the wind and gravity to initiate construction of its web, the lack of gravitational force in Skylab would provide a new and different stimulus to the spider's behavioral response.

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