For as long as people have been going into space, other people have been wondering, “Are they, you know, doing it up there?” A bunch of other men and women astronauts have lived together for various stretches of time on the International Space Station, which has only enhanced the public’s curiosity about space sex.
Getting it on in space is still very much a case of ‘close but no cigar.’ And no space sex means no space babies, which will be a bummer for our plans to live on Mars–or anywhere else in outer space. Still, it is not all doom and gloom, and it’s certainly all interesting stuff, the stuff of life, so let’s get into the nitty-gritty of sex in space.
If you went out and had a lot of drinks with a bunch of astronauts, you might hear them say that there’s a lot of sex happening in space—just not with other people. The same natural urges felt on Earth are felt in space, so astronauts are intimately familiar with what it’s like to masturbate while weightless. If you are curious about details, please avail yourself of this introduction to the ‘space toilet’, and how astronauts dispose of what comes out of their bodies while they’re on mission. Let us just say that everything tied up in a bag enjoys a fiery hot death on re-entry after being cruelly ejected from the waste disposal.
So there, that is out of the way. But sex between crew members—the only people who’ve ever been into space—has never happened, according to those who’ve been there.
Retired Commander Chris Hadfield told me over the phone of his three journeys into space said, “I was an astronaut for 21 years and I know of absolutely no instance on any spaceflight,”.
One married couple went to space—Mark Lee and Jan Davis, who flew together in 1992 and divorced in 1998—before NASA forbade the practice because of the effect it could have on crew dynamics. Privacy on the ISS is impossible anywhere but the tiny room of the space toilet, but the nosey press asked at the time about the likelihood of the newlyweds consummating their love on the space station.
NASA said in 1992, ‘It’s none of your business’. When asked NASA what the official line on space love among crew members is today, the public relations office replied, “While we expect our employees to behave in a professional manner at all times, their personal lives are their own until it begins to directly affect their job performance.”
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Source: Fusion, Genetic Literacy Project
