Tardigrade Union Demands Better Working Conditions After Being Launched Into Space for the Fifteenth Time

Representatives of the newly formed Tardigrade Workers' Collective announced Wednesday that their members will no longer tolerate being 'yeeted into the vacuum of space without so much as a consent form,' marking the first organized labor action by a microscopic organism in recorded history. The announcement, delivered via a press release so small it required an electron microscope to read, outlines a list of grievances accumulated over decades of extremophile research. Chief among them: being repeatedly desiccated, irradiated, frozen to near absolute zero, and launched into low Earth orbit 'to see what happens.' 'We already know what happens,' said union spokesperson Tardy McWaterbear, a 0.5mm eight-legged organism who has survived fourteen separate space missions. 'We survive. We always survive. That's the whole point of us. Can we please stop proving it?' The collective's demands include hazard pay (in the form of moss), a maximum of two space missions per lifecycle, and what the press release describes as 'basic acknowledgment that surviving a supernova simulation is not the flex you think it is.' Xenobiologists have expressed mixed reactions. 'Tardigrades are the gold standard for extremophile research,' said Dr. Yuki Tanaka of the Astrobiology Directorate. 'If they refuse to participate, we'll have to find other organisms willing to be boiled, frozen, and shot into space. The applicant pool is thin.' NASA has offered to negotiate, proposing a compromise that includes 'premium-grade lichen in all research habitats' and a dedicated tardigrade rest area aboard the International Space Station.