It turns out we have no absolute idea as to what space sex would be like, albeit the numerous astronauts that been up in the stratosphere. To this day, NASA doesn’t have any reports of people joining the 62-mile-high club so if you’ve heard something like that before, that would be a hoax.
At an Atlantic Live panel in May, an assistant professor at George Washington University emphasized that Sex In Space should be a “real concern” for astronauts. Nobody is really sure how Humans are going to reproduce in extreme conditions in space and the research is still on.
Preparing the body and mind for space sex
In one of the panel’s segments, Dr. Kris Lehnhardt said it is important to address how the human body can handle space travel and long-term space occupation, as how astronauts are prepared before setting out. The same is true in having sex in space – that is, if we want to be successful at colonization.
“It’s a real concern, Lehnhardt quipped.” “…something we really don’t know about is human reproduction in space. If we want to become a spacefaring species and live in space permanently, this is a crucial issue we need to address that has not been studied yet.”
Human reproduction and development work in the final frontier to confidently plan out sustainable settlements on Mars or anywhere else off-Earth, for now, remains a mystery, Lehnhardt said.
He continued on explaining that the idea is not something that’s been neglected; rather, its relevance hadn’t been realized until now, where Mars colonization is currently being worked out by many sectors.
Elon Musk, for one, announced a plan to start colonizing Mars by 2020. Space tourism companies have started their campaign offering people extremely pricey trips outer space as well.
It’s become a possibility – the idea of a space vacation – which brings us, naturally, to the question: can we have sex in space?
Is sex in space even possible?
The idea of sexual intercourse in the weightlessness of outer space presents difficulties due to Newton’s third law, which means if two people remain attached, their movements will counter each other.
There's also the little question of gravity. Gravity helps blood flow rapidly to certain places on the body and without gravity, men may not be able to get erections and women may also not get quite as physically aroused by sex. If, and only if, we did find a way to have sex in space in the future, it may not even be particularly enjoyable.
Can you get pregnant in space?
Fears that space travel could damage fertility and hinder a long-term mission to Mars have been partially allayed after healthy mice were born from sperm stored in the International Space Station for nine months.
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study found no difference between the pups born through the procedure and a control group when fertilized eggs with sperm had been kept on the ISS for 288 days.
The researchers said it's a step toward reproducing other mammals, even humans, using space-preserved sperm. They envision missions lasting several years or multiple generations, during which assisted reproductive technology might be used for domestic animals and people, too.
