Sex in Outer Space
What would it be like? Has it happened already? If so, how long until the pictures are on the Internet?
Barbara Gallagher looks at NASA's traditional squeamishness about sex in space, an attitude that will have to loosen up sometime soon. With the new international
space station and possibly interplanetary travel requiring longer stays in space, scientists are investigating the psychological effects of the extraterrestrial lifestyle. From Scientific American (January 2000).
A scholarly article in the new issue of Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly looks at the
history of sex in the US and Soviet/Russian space programs. Despite its dry, academic title, "The Psychological and Social Effects
of Isolation on Earth and in Space" reportedly contains salacious anecdotes about sex aboard the Mir
space station, plans to film a "sex documentary" in Mir, astronauts watching porn videos in space, and
assorted sexual experiments in NASA's zero-gravity simulation tank in Alabama. From Wired News (November 2000).
Raymond Noonan (or "Raymond J. Noonan, Ph.D.," as he's listed here) ponders the possibilities of sex in outer space, and wonders if this particular final frontier has been crossed yet. From The Position.
Chris Colin reports on the Space Island Group, a company which hopes to open an
orbiting 500-room space hotel within six years. The company's recent PR has played to curiosity about the erotic possibilities of weightlessness: "At first, the plan was just to open a space hotel. But our research shows that the real reason couples want to spend a week in space is for fabulous sex." Initial room rates will run $1,000,000 per week, but the company's president expects that to fall to $24,000 per week by 2012.
Salon (May 2001)
In an interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta, Russian cosmonaut Talgat Musabayev insists that
no one has ever had sex in space: "Definitely not, although there is a lot of idle talk around this." So why not, you ask? "A lot of different commissions -- moral, ethical and medical ones -- that were discussing this, finally ruled that one must not do it so far, because the consequences are unknown for those who would be born." Um, why not just use birth control?
Space.com (June 2001)
The privately funded Mars Society plans to send mice into orbit for two months in a specially designed capsule, in order to test the effects of low gravity on sex, reproduction and childhood development. Ananova has a great cross-section graphic of the proposed capsule.
Ananova
Liz Langley tries to talk her way into the tourist seat on the Russian space capsule, now that Lance Bass can't make it. "I don't know whether there have been any studies on sex in anti-gravity conditions, but I could initiate a few, which might make a pleasant sidebar to whatever else this mission is all about. This is particularly true if your space ship is stocked with the ingredients for Lemon Drops (ice-cold vodka, lemons, sugar) and a Spanish radio station." She also suggests some ways to liven up the space program. "First, change the name of the mission to 'Temptation Station' and provide attractive models to lure astronauts away from their duties with rum drinks and hot-tub parties. . . . Also, there is not nearly enough catty dialogue in space, so I suggest taping some segments of the astronauts saying bitchy things about each other that only the on-board microphones and all the people on earth would hear."
