Scientist Says NASA Must Study Space Sex 389
Velcroman1 writes "NASA has always been tight lipped on the subject of sex in space — which makes people all the more curious. How would it work? Has anyone done it before? Can a child be conceived in zero-G? With few animal tests (and virtually no human testing), there's been next to no scientific analysis of the issue. Until now. The Journal of Cosmology has published a special issue detailing the mission to Mars, which touches all the bases. In a chapter titled Sex on Mars, Dr. Rhawn Joseph from the Brain Research Laboratory in California discusses everything from the social conditions that would push astronauts to have sex to the possibility of the first child being born on another planet. Such an infant would be the first real Martian — at least by nationality, the researcher pointed out. 'On Mars, the light's going to be different, the gravity will be different, it's a completely different atmosphere,' he said. 'So if you put an infant on Mars, they would adapt to varying degrees of the new environment. And after several generations, you'd have a new species,' he said."
Groking space sex may not be in our interests... (Score:4, Insightful)
Michael Valentine Smith. Martian by mentality, human by heredity.
Re: (Score:2)
Its the only way to go, man.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense. Animals act impulsively, instinctively. It's our intellect, toolmaking ability, humor, and our ability to control our impulses that make us human.
Wise man, my ass. Who is this "wise" guy, Moe or Curly?
Re:A wise man once said.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
It would have been funny on my planet.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
MOD parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy and his fake "Journal of Cosmology" is a lune. The joke is on slashdot for even putting this in the science category.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The only real scenario I can com
Re: (Score:2)
Those differences mean squat for a single life, but they might mean a lot even over a relatively small number generatio
Re:Several? (Score:5, Informative)
Speciation doesn't require selection pressure, it only requires that part of the population reproduces independently for sufficient generations. In the case of humans a generation is typically 20 or 25 years, and 'sufficient generations' depends on the size of the isolated population. Smaller populations drift genetically much faster than large, well-mixed populations. But several thousand generations would be needed as a minimum. So we're looking at somewhere in the region of 40 000 to 50 000 years or more for a new species of human to arise.
Selection pressures cause genetic drift to move in particular directions rather than in random directions. They don't *cause* speciation though they do guide the kinds of change that take place.
Hope that helps.
Re:Several? (Score:5, Insightful)
But several thousand generations would be needed as a minimum. So we're looking at somewhere in the region of 40 000 to 50 000 years or more for a new species of human to arise
I'd say even longer than that. Native Americans immigrated from Asia what, thirty thousand years ago? Yet they're not a different species from Africans or Europeans; not much different at all from any other race.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Several? (Score:5, Insightful)
And, though I rarely ever use the word these days except when talking about some foreign cultures, the article even manages to come across as sexist since the majority of it seems to be written from the perspective of whether to include females in space flights with the rationale that females cause sex! (Note to critics, it is the combination of these two things that triggers a response of 'sexist'. In my experience, men also, uh, cause sex).
History of space exploration is a history of man. First man in space, first man on the moon. Most likely first man on Mars. It's fair assumption that we will be adding women to men teams not the other way.
In short: don't be so politically correct. Man and woman are different, they behave differently, they have differnt physical abilities. Giving women right to vote is good thing but it doesn't make them magically equal to man in every way. And by saying that I don't mean women are inferior - they are just different.
Re:Several? (Score:5, Funny)
And by saying that I don't mean women are inferior - they are just different.
Indeed, and most of us here love to keep looking at the differences
Re: (Score:3)
As a small sidenote, sex is also perfectly possible with only one gender present, it's only procreation that's going to be a bit of a challenge.
Also, how long have people been on the ISS ? It seems a bit, well, naieve to think the 100-mile high club hasn't been founded by now. Well, 220 mile, really, but, you know.
Re: (Score:2)
We'd be working very hard to recreate Earth-like conditions on Mars, so the infant would grow accustomed to Earth-like conditions. Otherwise, everyone would die.
Please, do correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm no expert, but I would have thought that messing with things like atmosphere, diet etc would make the life expectancy of the parents quite short.
Not even then (Score:2, Informative)
Speciation will not occur under (presumed) regular interbreeding with the population back home.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
since you cannot call people with an other skin color an other species
Because they don't meet the definition of distinct species.
If two populations can interbreed freely, they are the same species. If you put a bunch of these earth-humans and mars-humans together in a colony and you get a significant number of hybrids, which in turn interbreed with either population, then it's a single species.
At most they could be considered subspecies.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
For large values of several.
Not to mention a non-standard definition of "species." As I seem to recall, the biological definition of "species" simply involves whether or not a male and female can create a sexually viable offspring. Hence, donkeys and horses are different species, because mules (what you get when mating a horse and a donkey) are sterile, but different breeds of dogs (or cats or horses or whatever) aren't considered different species because they do create offspring which create offspring and so on (have your pets spa
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
after several generations you'd have a new species
For large values of several.
Idiot.
And only if the individuals less adapted to this environment are killed / not allowed to breed. If there is no natural selection and no artificial selection, apparition of a new species is very unlikely.
Re: (Score:2)
Not that I disagree with your point (that they'd still be completely humans, with minor adaptations during growth comparable to i.e. Sherpas vs. the rest of us), but the atmosphere is no way going to be the same as Earth's; why in hell would you load up your dome (or other structure) with 2-3x the pressure stresses needed, and cost yourself more energy pumping airlocks, etc.?!
I recall reading of a study that indicates Sherpas are genetically different from the rest of us, and not simply adapted to high altitudes by virtue of having grown up there. I believe they found some grown-up, American-born children of Nepalese parents who had emigrated, and took them back to Nepal and none of them suffered from altitude sickness at all.
I think there would be a slight natural selection pressure - with those better able to tolerate martian conditions being healthier, and therefore more attr
Soooooo.... (Score:4, Funny)
hmm... (Score:2)
I guess I wouldn't mind being the progenitor of a new species...
also, it would get me out of my mom's basement, and most likely result in meeting girls?
Sucky part is, I guess they don't have fiber-interweb-tubes on Mars?
Re:hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
I guess I wouldn't mind being the progenitor of a new species... also, it would get me out of my mom's basement, and most likely result in meeting girls?
Don't count on it. [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:hmm... (Score:4, Funny)
There are easier ways to get a girlfriend than going to Mars. And having a girlfriend isn't really worth losing the whole internet, your family, friends, etc.
Okay, it might seem like it for your first girlfriend, but you'll get over it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You just need a big caching proxy.
Let's hope Google sets up a server park there soon. Although highly interactive ajaxy features still aren't going to work there.
Re:hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
TCP wouldn't work, but replacing it is damn straightforward[1]. With that done, even regular http would work, although it would suck due to needing several round trips for referenced CSS/images/subframes/whatnot. The latter is also quite obvious -- many of us could whip up a primitive but working proxy in an hour.
If bandwidth isn't a concern, it might be better to do a whole-site wget rip and send it in one go.
[1]. Nearly all complexity in TCP is due to handshaking, retransmissions and adjusting the window. With no handshaking possible and terabyte windows, you can throw most of that away. Adding generous Reed-Solomon codes over the whole message and possibly retransmitting just damaged blocks would be obvious goodies to add, but that's still nothing compared to the mess that current TCP is.
Re:hmm... (Score:5, Informative)
TCP is already being transparently recreated at the ends of the link in many satellite internet access systems. The TCP connection is transparently terminated at the uplink side, and re-created at the downlink. Over-the-air uses custom protocols geared towards high latency and dropouts.
Re: (Score:3)
That depends on the relative position of the two planets. At its closest it's about ten minutes, if I remember what I read about the rovers correctly. But at its farthest, when the planets are on opposite sides of the sun, it will be a LOT longer.
You're not going to be playing counter strike with anybody on earth.
Re: (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlaNet [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet [wikipedia.org]
With such conditions it seems possible the-thing-we-don't-speak-about will see some renaissance at some point.
Re: (Score:2)
With such conditions it seems possible the-thing-we-don't-speak-about will see some renaissance at some point.
AOL? Dear gods.
Re: (Score:2)
Not quite... quite the opposite, actually. The-thing-we-don't-speak-about was sort of brought down, after all, by AOL sponsored variety of September.
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't help :p I only ever experienced AOL on a friend's computer in around 2002. I didn't realise that they actually made any useful changes to the internet landscape.
One sex tip for future Mars colonists (Score:3, Funny)
Beware the sand!
Re: (Score:2)
Also, beware the Sandkings [wikipedia.org].
Conception shouldn't be a problem (Score:5, Informative)
It's not like "submerged in water" isn't a decent enough approximation (and in fact used by space agencies, but to model different stuff). It's not like humans aren't imaginative, if there's a possibility of some action... (even easier: send slashdotters, we'll do anything) Progress of the pregnancy is another issue of course.
But you wouldn't have new species if there wasn't much of a selection. Not for the usual meaning of "several"
Sadly, conception can be a problem (Score:3)
I knew a couple who really wanted to have kids. The woman had difficulty getting pregnant, and then she had some miscarriages. I was in tears when she told me about the experiences. Her husband is a very wealthy man from Altona, near Hamburg in Germany. The homes in Altona make Hollywood mansions look like a trailer park. She told me that she felt pressure to 'produce' a male heir.
So she took some 'fertility' pills, and a beautiful baby boy came out. But she developed breast cancer six months later
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder how strongly the fetus' position is dependent on gravity... in a lesser/near-zero gravity environment you might have a much higher percentage of breech births or other positional problems.
Are they accepting volunteers? (Score:2)
Sounds like a good job opportunity.
Okay, I have to ask... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would anyone wonder about this? From how I see it (and from what I believe to know about the mechanics involved), why should a child not be conceived in zero-G?
When a woman orgasms, her cervix dips into (depending on the position) pool of seed the man released, sucking it in. The female anatomy then helps transport the material to where it belongs, where several spermatozoa work together to crack the female egg shell.
This process is in no way a battle between the little guys to see which is the strongest but a joint effort and the female organism helps them along, too. So while conception might be a bit trickier due to the whole process being slower because of not enough contact with the female anatomy (and thus more time-consuming, possibly to the point where the spermatozoa die before doing their job), I see no reason why it shouldn't be possible.
Re:Okay, I have to ask... (Score:5, Funny)
From how I see it (and from what I believe to know about the mechanics involved)...
When a woman orgasms, her cervix dips into (depending on the position) pool of seed the man released, sucking it in.
Wait, this is how you think sex works? The man orgasms, sex continues, then some time later, the female orgasms and becomes pregnant?!?
If pregnancy depended on the woman orgasming after the man, the accidental pregnancy rate would be close to zero
Re:Okay, I have to ask... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
*rolls eyes* it's ONE possible scenario that is supposed to show that a possible way to impregnate a woman without gravity exists. That in turn means it can't be impossible.
And by the way, seeing as it happens often enough to have become a cliché, what's your beef with a scenario where a male has already ejaculated at the point the female orgasms?
Re: (Score:3)
That would be because continuing after orgasm is painful for a man. Things get... over-sensitive.
Says you. Personally I don't usually have much problem continuing at least for a little bit, although the erection isn't sustainable for too long after. Over-sensitivity isn't usually a problem.
It's ok though, that's when you use other things like fingers, lips, and your tongue to continue until the refractory period [wikipedia.org] has passed!
Re: (Score:2)
Why would anyone wonder about this? From how I see it (and from what I believe to know about the mechanics involved), why should a child not be conceived in zero-G?
Well, I think you are maybe going out on a limb with your assumptions about conception in zero-gee/micro-gravity being easy and a 'no brainer', I have no doubts at all about humans ability to 'adapt, and overcome' any obstacles to getting laid...anywhere, anytime, and under extreme conditions!
I think that exploration of human reproduction in other than 'on earth' environments is a worthy scientific pursuit, but with our current social/cultural/religious attitudes, well, there are bound to be problems...
This
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
1. You probably couldn't get a decent erection in microgravity. Your blood pressure would be too low.
On this episode of Mythbusters...
Rule 34 (Score:2)
No doubt (Score:5, Funny)
The issue of illegal aliens will come up
semen is much lighter than males (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Kurt Vonnegut would agree [pierretristam.com].
Re: (Score:3)
Why only semen? [wikipedia.org] (plus small initial stock of women, of course - especially in our system, it will be most likely more viable / sooner than artificial uteri and surrogate mother robots)
Numerically, it might very well be the main mode of human transportation between the colonies... (as you said, they will need genetic diversity) in deep hibernation / we can do it already! Embryos or their precursors.
Re:semen is much lighter than males (Score:5, Funny)
slippery slope (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Successful reproduction does not end at the insemination stage. While we still have a long way to go to understand the whole process, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the father is as important as the mother to a developing child, although in a different way.
Re: (Score:2)
1) Says you. Myself and several other single-parent friends have plenty of others that don't seem to be as prevalent with our two-parent friends. :/
2) Hurray for genetic diversity
Re: (Score:2)
"1) Citation needed. Children of single mothers/lesbian parents/work-away-from-home fathers develop perfectly normally."
Citation needed.
Re: (Score:3)
1) Citation needed. Children of single mothers/lesbian parents/work-away-from-home fathers develop perfectly normally.
Depending on what you consider normal. Physiologically, sure, but psychologically, male role models turn out to be pretty important for the development of boys. It doesn't have to be the father, but with a lack of men in child care and primary education, some boys grow up seeing hardly any men before they're 12, and it turns out that that's actually causing problems.
2) Sperm from a male is not necessary at all, the reason you can't combine two eggs are epigenetic and progress has been made in recent years. Some bright sparks amongst you would notice that two woman would only be able to have daughters (but if they were conceived and raised without men this isn't really a problem).
I guess not having any boys born would solve that problem.
Cosmopolitan vs Journal of Cosmology (Score:5, Funny)
The Journal of Cosmology has published a special issue...which touches all the bases. In a chapter titled Sex on Mars...
Are we sure we got the right "Cosmo" here?
Re: (Score:2)
"Get hot with our list of raunchy space cowboy positions!" - Story on pg 13
I doubt no testing (Score:5, Insightful)
Virtually no human testing? Given the kind of person who gets into the astronaut corps, I seriously doubt that. There's probably been no official investigation into this done, but when you coop seven mixed-gender, highly intelligent, very curious, extremely goal-driven, competitive problem-solvers up in a small ship for the lengths of time a shuttle mission runs, I think we can pretty much guarantee there's been plenty of unofficial investigations conducted. And there's been IIRC several mixed-gender ISS crews, so ditto there.
I also suspect they've found the entire exercise to be awkward, exhausting (and not in the good way), inconvenient to arrange around all the monitoring that's done, difficult to keep private in those cramped quarters, and generally an awful lot of work for a lot less reward than you'd expect. But if anybody wants to go to Mars they're going to have to figure out how to deal with sex and how to make it reasonably convenient, because no crew's going to remain completely celibate that long.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
We could send catholic priests...oh wait
Re: (Score:2)
Although I suppose you really could send catholic priests as long as there are no minors on board. The church even admitted fairly recently that the planets revolve around the sun, so there can be no religious objections to the trip anymore either.
Re:I doubt no testing (Score:4, Insightful)
I also suspect they've found the entire exercise to be awkward, exhausting (and not in the good way), inconvenient to arrange around all the monitoring that's done, difficult to keep private in those cramped quarters, and generally an awful lot of work for a lot less reward than you'd expect.
Most of those statements could be made about "The Mile High Club" and yet people do it just to say that they've done it.
Re: (Score:2)
Time to invoke rule #34?
Gravity and embryonic development (Score:2)
There have been some amusing studies on quail and development in microgravity. It was hypothesized that gravity might be necessary for proper development. I haven't read any papers on it, but I've heard the embryos seemed pretty normal. Suggests that human embryos might develop normally too.
Not entirely surprising. Embryos and their mothers or eggs carrying them can be oriented any way with no obvious defects in development. I mean, I'm guessing not many pregnant women will want to stand on their heads
Sterilize the men, but carry frozen semen (Score:3)
To avoid accidental pregnancy, simply sterilize the men, it's a simple procedure.
Then, if the goal is to colonize Mars and actually have pregnancies there, transport the frozen semen of the husbands to inseminate their wives, along with frozen semen from other men to use with some of the female offspring to avoid incest.
There, all problems solved!
Re:Sterilize the men, but carry frozen semen (Score:5, Funny)
"Married couples are probably the best bet"
We're talking about a stress-filled, claustrophobic situation in which there would be no possibility of sex for months at a time, if not years. And space travel too.
Send sexually uninhibited people (Score:2)
No stress, no "cheating" (since it's not), sex is just something you do, like a sport. It wouldn't be hard to find people like that. Of course you should still avoid zero-G pregnancy, but contraceptives or sterilization are not exactly rocket science.
On top of that, as an added bonus, video fe
Re: (Score:3)
"After several generations" (Score:4, Funny)
Indeed, humans have Borg-like powers of genetic adaptation, so that several generations of living in an extraterrestrial habitat that has been technologically rendered as Earth-like as possible would cause them to spontaneously mutate to the point of sexual incompatibility with normal humans (the normal definition of separate species).
Re: (Score:2)
No the species would need a bit of help. Simply kill all the babies that weren't green with antennae and you'd have martian's in no time.
Obligatory TFA quote (Score:2)
any difficulties associated with sexual intercourse in space may turn out to be an easily solved problem of docking and entry as human are notorious for inventing ways of having sex despite all manner of logistical impediments
Oh the insinuations are infinite!
Foetal development (Score:2)
non sense on speciation (Score:3)
I seriously doubt he said that, or he is not a biologist worth its salt (no I did not read the *fox news* article). The only way to have a new specie , is only if there are mutation which happens to make the new baby to be more adapted to the new environment, and this is selected for, NOT because they grow there and are getting use to the environment (in the latest case, such a person having baby on earth would have baby identical to any other human). I seriously doubt this would happen in several generation only, most probably you would need much more by 1 or 2 order of magnitude to see a real new specie.
New Species? (Score:3)
Erm, unlikely.
After several 1000 generations, if children with mutations are allowed to develop, you may have a new species.
Infrastructure? (Score:5, Interesting)
And that says nothing about the piles of diapers, or the need for something resembling a proper education, or proper pediatric care and nutrition...
I just don't see it being reasonable to have children on Mars until we have a sizable established population of adults there for a reasonably long time. And at that, we might want to wait until we have figured out the round trip (although a long car ride with a child can be infuriating - I can't imagine what interplanetary transport would be like!).
"virtually no human testing" (Score:2)
I demand references on the testing that practically/literally did occur, that would justify your use of "virtually".
Re: (Score:2)
More like (Score:2)
Several *thousand* generations. Evolution doesn't work that quick, unless Mars is made of Mutagen-x.
No testing? (Score:2)
virtually no human testing
And how do they know?
As always the porn industry has beaten them to it (Score:2)
The porn spoof "The Uranus Experiment" contains several zero-g sex scenes (using parabolic flight) so sex in zero-g must at least be physically possible
generation of darkness (Score:2)
We sure don't need that, we already have sensational slashdot editors completely lacking in the office of gravity. Fortunately it's 04:00 and I don't have the physical energy to hammer my brains out, though this troll caption gave me good incentive.
criminy (Score:2)
Jebeeeesus etch crisis, I have to kick this cat again.
What's the difference between a nerd and a retard? One of them can tie a Windsor knot, but I forget which.
Talk to Russia (Score:3)
Maybe NASA should talk to the Russian about this I'm sure they've done a few experiments on this subject matter at some point
229 posts and nobody is asking? (Score:3)
Where can we sign up?
Re: (Score:2)
You'll probably need some demonstratable knowledge of the mission goals, so that pretty much rules out /. regulars.
Re: (Score:2)
You would have no new species in Mars at all, since evolution is based in competition for life and death of the less adapted ones, which does not happen with humans anymore. We make devices to adapt ourselves to diverse circumstances so humans don't die because of being not adapted to environments unless a mutation makes some specimens fit for such environments and survive, by consequence, we don't evolve into new species. Some people in the NASA obviously need to review the evolution theory.
Evolution theory. There's also nothing that says that "natural selection" etc are the only processes that can or do take place.
Re: (Score:2)
Hell, just make the rotational section for specific uses, such as a nursery or medical. It's a lot simpler if only a small part of the system needs to be under rotation.