 NASA is very good at public relations. They'll tell you, in exquisite detail, everything that happens in a shuttle flight: what the astronauts had for breakfast, even how zero gravity toilets work. But there is one topic that is absolutely taboo: sex.
People have been' doing it' for milennia and, accordintg to Freud, thinking about it when they're not. And yet, if you believe Nasa, it never crosses and astronaut's mind.
Last year, during a live talkback interview with astronauts on the shuttle Atlantis, which had just docked with the Russian space station Mir, one cable TV viewer popped the qestion: "I was just wondering" said the caller, "has anyboby ever thought about having sex in space?"
" Yes," interjected the compere," tell us about the rules for that.!"
Shuttle commander Charles Precourt immediately Jumped in:
"Well, we don't have to worry about the rules for that . We're all so busy,,and we're professionals, of course."
It's not the first tiine NASA has had palpitations about this pesky element of human biology. In 1976, NASA was preparing to launch the Pioneer 10 space probe to the outer planets. The probe would eventually travel beyond the solar system and into deep space.
Should an alien civilization chance upon it millions of years from now, NASA decided to attach a plaque saying who we are and where in the gaaxy we live.
It was full of mathematical formulas that a discerning civilization might decode. But it also had a image of a man and a woman standing naked, the man holding up his outstretched hand in a sign of peace. The etchings were, as they say, anatomically correct.
A few months before the launch date. an American Christian group heard about the plaque and kicked up a storm about Nasa exporting pornography to the stars".Concerned congressmen began to quiz the space agency.
NASA quickly had the artist, Jon Lomberg, recast the plaque, minus any genitalia!
Australians are often struck by how puritanical Americans are.Which is why it's so refreshing to see them discussing discussing sex on prime-time television in the wake of the Clinton escapades. At least they're acknowledging sex exists.
NASA, on the other hand, operates on the basis that sex doesn't happen, and isn't ever going to happen, in space. That's what they told Yvonne Clearwater, a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Centre, when she applied to study issues of sexuality in zero gravity.
With the advent of mixed-sex crews and a new permanent space station to become operational in the next decade, NASA is going to have to face up to it. Because, official or not, somewhere, someday, somebody is going to try it.
That's not saying that it's going to be easy. The technical difficulties facing a couple are nothing like those on Earth.
As any astronaut attempting a docking manoevre in orbit will tell you, getting things to click to click together in zero gravity is a devilish business. The minute you touch something, it moves away from you.
It has been suggested that a harness will be necessary - one that holds one partner attached to the other. But the kinetic energy generated by the process might see them crashing into bulkheads rather frequently. Tying people down into a kind of bungy attatchment might be in order.
But that's not all: there is also the problem of equipment failure. As NASA medics have known for some time, zero gravity tends to make bodily fluids, such as blood, pool in the top half of the body. Astronauts have to exercise very hard, strapped onto bikes, to get blood to their lower extremities. Under such circumstances, one can imagine some difficulty with performance.
We really need research into this. If humans are to colonise space, as NASA would have us believe, we need to settle this issue.
Let's get real: noone is going to colonise space if they can't have sex there. Rather than being prudish about it, we need the Americans looking into this as a matter of urgency. Surely they don't want the Russians to get there first?
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