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Mission next: Taking a lover to space
America must begin preparing astronauts for sex in space if it is serious about sending people to Mars, according to one of its advisers.
- The Daily Telegraph
- Published: 23:16 July 18, 2008
Washington: America must begin preparing astronauts for sex in space if it is serious about sending people to Mars, according to one of its advisers.
Dr Jason Kring said astronauts might have to emulate polar explorers and take a colleague as a lover for the duration of their three-year mission, to minimise sexual frustration.
Dr Kring, who is studying the best sex balance of crews for the next wave of space travel, is an assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida.
Dr Kring said the National Aeronautic and Space Agency (Nasa) needed to study the practicalities and dangers of sex and pregnancy in space and should factor the need for more privacy into the design of spacecraft intended to return to the Moon after 2015 before flying to Mars to set up a permanent manned base in the following decade. He made the suggestion on Space.com, a website dealing with space issues.
He told The Sunday Telegraph: "The men and women whom we select to go back to the Moon, and on to Mars, will be professionals.
"But the bottom line is that, like hunger and thirst, sex is a basic biological motive. The potential round-trip mission to Mars could take three years. It doesn't make sense to assume that these men and women are going to have no thoughts of it for three years. Nasa and other space agencies should address this in their training and in crew selection."
Mars is always at least 45 million miles away from Earth - 180 times farther than the Moon. Dr Kring's research involves placing highly trained pilots and military personnel in stressful situations and confined spaces, to judge how best to combine men and women on long-duration space flights.
He believes that Nasa could learn from the operation of bases at the South Pole, where researchers who are separated from their families for months at a time, take "expedition spouses" as sexual partners for the duration.
Polar explorers
He said: "You have an exclusive relationship with them for six to nine months, but when the expedition is over so is the relationship and you return to your normal lives and families. The polar environment has similar characteristics of isolation and confinement to space. Most of the evidence suggests that the addition of women there has had a positive effect on these traditionally all-male crews."
The notion of sex in space is attracting growing attention. This month, the American and Japanese companies First Advantage and Rocketplane Global said they would offer weddings in space for $2.3 million (Dh8.4 million).
Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson's venture to send tourists into space, says it has received requests from couples hoping to be the first to have intercourse in space.
However, that particular crown may have been claimed in 1992 by married astronauts who flew on the Shuttle. Jan Davis and Mark Lee have never commented on speculation that they inaugurated the "100-mile-high club".
No comments
Nasa is tight-lipped. Two years ago, when Nasa doctor Jim Logan told a conference that sex in space could induce motion sickness, he was careful to stress that he was speaking in a private capacity.
Other problems include the tendency to sweat more in zero-gravity and a drop in blood pressure, potentially making sex both clammier and, for the man, physiologically problematic. Most serious is the danger of conceiving.
Russian studies with pregnant rats showed a decrease in both skeletal and brain development in zero gravity. The gravity of the Moon is one sixth of that on Earth and on Mars it is a third.
Dr Kring said: "The biggest consideration would be if we have a pregnancy in space. There are a lot of big ethical issues, particularly if the embryo is not going to develop properly."
Oral contraceptives, like some other medicines, may not work well in space.
Ultimately, if man is to have the option of living on Mars, more research will be needed.
"If humankind is going to extend its presence beyond Earth, we are going to have to consider: can we procreate on another world?" Dr Kring said. "If a child is born on another planet, could that individual come back to Earth and live in the one-G environment?"
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