SEX IN SPACE
Can humans reproduce in space? That’s the question posed by a new film. But, as TOM LEONARD reveals, scientists have studied zero gravity romance for longer than you think. . .
JANE FONDA performed one of cinema’s most memorable stripteases as she floated around in zero gravity and slipped out of her spacesuit in Barbarella.
Roger Moore had no trouble with weightlessness as he made love to Bond girl Holly Goodhead on a space shuttle in Moonraker. ‘Take me round the world one more time, James,’ she purred.
Now there are two more members of the 100,000-Mile High Club in a new movie starring Juliette Binoche and Robert Pattinson. In High Life, they are travelling in a spaceship towards a black hole.
Binoche plays a scientist carrying out an experiment to see if humans can reproduce in space. When Pattinson’s character — like his crewmates, a condemned criminal used as a guinea pig — refuses to donate sperm, she resorts to more conventional methods.
Sex in space may seem a daft fixation of movie producers, but it is a serious subject for scientists.
If mankind is to survive should the Earth become uninhabitable, people may either have to live in space or colonise other planets. If men and women wanted to sow the seeds of humanity’s future, then they would have to procreate in a weightless atmosphere.
NaSa, the u.S. space agency, and the Russian space programme are already researching the issue. Last year, frozen samples of human sperm were sent into space to see if its condition was affected.
Goldfish taken up on space missions have reproduced, while rats have given birth in orbit. But what about people? Nasa and its Russian equivalent insist that they have no knowledge of anyone having had sex in space. However, space scientists say they wouldn’t be surprised if some had tried.
The first mission to include both sexes went up in 1982 to the Soviets’ Salyut 7 space station, but the female cosmonaut, Svetlana Savitskaya, was married.
NaSa doesn’t send couples into space together for fear of damaging the team dynamic. But it was forced to make an exception when training- camp sweethearts Jan Davis and Mark Lee married just before they went into space on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992.
They have always refused to discuss whether they had conjugal relations on the mission.
RUMOURS
circulated in the Nineties that Russian cosmonauts Valery Polyakov and Yelena Kondakova had become more than friends on the Mir space station.
The story was given a little credence by footage showing Polyakov flirtatiously splashing Kondakova with water.
Inevitably, there have been false alarms and hoaxes in the quest to boldly go where no lovers have gone before. French astronomer and writer Pierre Kohler wrote a book about Mir, claiming that astronauts had enjoyed ‘ cosmic couplings’ for tests designed to see how husband-and-wife teams could have ‘ normal marital relations’ on long missions.
Kohler cited a purported NaSa document on research into approved sexual positions.
astronauts discovered that four positions were possible without ‘ mechanical assistance’, while six others involved the couple attaching themselves with an elastic belt or an inflatable tube that pressed them together. The document turned out to be a fake.
In 1999, pornographic films called The uranus Experiment included ‘microgravity’ sex scenes allegedly filmed on the ‘Vomit Comet’ plane
used to simulate weightlessness. The films were fakes — clearly so because an actress’s ponytail hung down her back when it should have been floating.
The truth is that having sex in zero gravity takes a lot of work. ‘The No 1 enemy of sex in space is Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion,’ says physicist Michio Kaku. ‘It’s the third law — for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. If you push against something, it pushes back against you.’
Kira Bacal, a NaSa clinical consultant who has researched sex in space, says: ‘If you’re trying something that involves force against the other person, it takes a lot of strength to hold you together.’
So the slightest nudge from a partner can send the other person reeling across the cabin. Experts believe at least one partner would need to be anchored. Some have even suggested that a third person could help hold a pair together. Harry Stine, a former NaSa technician, claimed that the agency had simulated sex in space and concluded that the assistance of a third person would indeed be the best technique.
In practice, though, even staying together long enough to exchange a kiss is difficult in zero gravity.
Vanna
BoNTa, an author and inventor, discovered this while flying with her husband on G-Force one, a modified Boeing 727 that produces the effect of weightlessness.
She designed the ‘2suit’, which has Velcro flaps that open at the groin and could be stuck to another similarly opened suit for intimacy.
and then there are the physical limitations. In zero gravity, the human body becomes lazier. The heart doesn’t have to pump blood as vigorously, so it shrinks. Muscles
don’t have to work as hard, either. Sudden exertion — such as sex — would thus be especially tiring.
There is also the problem of sweat, which collects in layers on the skin or floats around the cabin without gravity working on it.
Dr James Logan, a former NaSa chief doctor, says: ‘Sex in zero gravity is going to have to be more or less choreographed, otherwise it’s just going to be a wild flail.’
as for sex drive, male testosterone levels drop in zero gravity. and the high-energy radiation in space may cause sterility or birth defects.
Finally, scientists point out that blood flows differently through the body in space — generally rising to the head and chest — so men may have trouble getting aroused.
But anecdotal evidence suggests that, if anything, sex drive rises in space. astronaut Mike Mullane says he had a persistent and painful condition when he woke up that he called the ‘Viagra effect’. Zero gravity does have one bonus, at least — it makes people look more attractive. Faces appear more flushed and wrinkle-free, women’s breasts become larger and legs look more toned.
on a psychological level, experts warn that sex in space could raise tension among a crew already living — metaphorically — on top of one another other. What might happen during a mission across the solar system if two of the three-person crew disappeared to canoodle at every opportunity?
So the riddle of how to have sex in space is more likely to be solved by the private space tourism industry, whose firms are racing each other into space and are anxious to give their high-paying customers whatever they want.
Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic reports that it has had inquiries from people wanting to have their honeymoon in space, including consummating the marriage. The company says it isn’t planning to offer that opportunity until it understands the risks.
However, space architects are already working on honeymoon suites on orbiting pleasure palaces that allow sex in sleeping bag-like ‘snuggle tunnels’, or swimming in giant floating water globes, a sort of zero-gravity hot-tub where the water is kept in place by airflow.
all this would give new meaning to the question: ‘Did the Earth move for you, darling?’ But then, the respondent might be too shattered to reply.