Breeding in outer space

Dear Mat: Has anyone ever had sex in space? — Curious of North Park

Dear Matthew Alice: When a female astronaut is in space, how does her weightless condition affect the process of menstruation, since that function relies on gravity rather than some other method such as an involuntary muscular action? — DP, San Diego

Ooooh, yeah, there has been sex in space. And I don’t mean Barbarella or Captain Kirk. It didn’t get much press, but a charming foursome joined the 250-Mile-High Club back in ’94. It was this primal kinda wet and slippery scene. Really rude. Ground control and the Columbia astronauts got to watch. It was fish. Four Japanese medaka fish. NASA zapped them into space to see if fish could do it or even had any interest in doing it in a weightless environment. Guess the answer is yes, though fish are already in a sort of weightless environment.

The Russians’ attempt with a cage full of rats was a bust. They seemed to have no particular interest in the activity, busy as they were trying to wrap their little rodent brains around the experience of weightlessness. But amorous floating rats are definitely a weirder image. Which brings up one of the big ergonomic problems with interstellar nookie. Body A pushes, Body B goes flying backwards. NASA does provide astronauts with sleeping bags, which might help a little. But it’s generally agreed that space sex would require some sort of harness or restraint device to keep the participants in synch. Or even in the same part of the capsule. So the first space sex should resemble a kinky porn flick.

In ’92 a husband-and-wife astronaut team went into space for 10 days and claim they offered to do it (in the interest of science, of course), but NASA was not amused. Seems the agency is a pretty hardware-oriented crowd that prefers to ignore messy human factors like the inevitability of space sex on long-duration flights. For the moment, though, astronauts claim they’re too distracted by busywork and nausea to worry about it.

If there has been any human-type sex in space, nobody’s admitting to it. It would be difficult to duck behind a piece of equipment for a quickie, since all physiological responses and body fluids are monitored by sensors attached to the astronauts’ bodies, and the whole episode would play out on computer screens back in Houston. There’s continual audio monitoring too.

A highly trained and disciplined astronaut like Shannon Lucid can spend six months locked in the MIR space station with two husky Russians and resist the urge for a little hanky-panky over an intimate glass of Tang. But all hell’s going to break loose when we civilians get up there. NASA is meeting with representatives of the American travel industry to study the feasibility of space tourism. They’d better get this space sex thing worked out before then, because you know we’re going to demand romantic lighting and hot tubs for the six-month ride to the Mars Marriott.

As for menstruation in space, it apparently is not greatly affected by weightlessness. And astronettes deal with it the same way they do on Earth.