Making Babies in Space May Be Difficult

Some animals have been bred in space, but not mammals. Japanese researchers are looking into the possibility, and doing experiments with mice on earth that mimic lower gravity space conditions.
To test these effects, the researchers artificially fertilized mouse eggs with sperm that had been stored inside a three-dimensional clinostat, a machine that mimics weightlessness by rotating objects in such a way that the effects of gravity are spread in every direction.

Fertilization took place normally, suggesting that microgravity hadn’t harmed the sperm. But as the embryos continued to develop inside the clinostat, many developed problems. Their cells had trouble dividing and maturing.

There were some baby mice produced after the embryos were implanted, but not many survived compared to a control group. Link -via Digg

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So are we going to start to get people up in space to have sex and produce children in an effort to force evolve a "spacer" catagory of humans which will eventualy addapt to their living atmosphere in space... or will they just end up looking like the people in Wall-E?
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Sci Fi idea: Homo Sapiens had cultivated the whole solar system, but had yet to re-create an environment suitable for pregnancy. So Earth turns into a gigantic hospital (as well as sex club), when people live in the rest of the Solar System.... but evil is at work to destroy humanity by blowing up the only place where birth comes from!!
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So, Larry Niven is right. See the Belters in his Tales of Known Space.

From Wikipedia:
"the Belt declared independence after creating Confinement Asteroid, a habitat with spin gravity that permitted safe gestation of children"
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