Just watched “Space Station” as a video rental. Good documentary, great photography. Fascinating how zero gravity changes the way our bodies move. Every action has a reaction ----much more noticeable than here on Earth. etc.
I guess it has never been attempted so nobody really knows. But how do you think zero gravity would affect sexual intercourse in space?
I think if both partners had something to hold onto (besides each other) it could be done sort of normally. But suppose they didn’t, and they were just free floating.
Arthur C. Clarke, in Rendezvous with Rama, made reference to a (presumably fictional, but ya never know) book called the NASA Sutra on the subject.
The lack of gravity would be both a help and a hindrance. You wouldn’t necessarily need rewestraints like bunjee cords and belts (unless that’s part of your normal routine). I could easily see using a room stuffed with inflated bolsters to keep you together. Kinda like sex in a car with inflated airbags.
In any event, I’m pretty sure The Master has addressed this in the past. It’s certainly showed up in science fiction, especially recently. I just read Harry Turtledov;es Colonization: Down to Earth, which has a depictyion of zero-G sex (it leaves little floating stickly globules, which are a bitch to clean up).
There’s an UL in circulation that NASA has performed experiments in this regard and that participants wear a little dolphin badge, apparently alluding to the (alleged) observation that dolphin sex involves a third party to keep the other two in the right place etc.
I’d be willing to give it a shot and report back, if someone can pony up the money for myself and a partner to hitch a ride (Ha!) to the International Space Station.
Ah, the things we do for science.
You don’t have to go into space. You can hitch a ride on the “Vomit Comet”, or try skydiving. I’ll bet any money that several instances of at least attempted sex have occurred.
Heck, someone who rode the Comet once told me that there had been some interesting things when he was aboard…
The definitive filksong on this topic is “A Reconsideration of Anatomical Docking Maneuvers in a Zero-Gravity Environment” by Diana Gallagher [Wu]. You can find the complete lyrics here (scroll 2/3 down the page): http://www.shoujoai.com/forum/topic_show.pl?pid=499703
There is a plane ready to take paying adventurers to zero-G. You can just pony up the cash and do it yourself. The plane is called the G-Force One for God’s sake.
You only get 30 seconds at a time or so. Be sure to lube in advance. They say Tang in 0-G is way better than on the ground.
C’mon, guys. Use a little imagination. Standard missionary position may not work without restraints but there are plenty of other configurations in which two persons can be, er, mechanically linked and capable of the necessary articulations. Clearly for the sake of humanity’s space-faring future, an on-line, open-source version of The Joy of Sex is an urgent imperative. As for the mess, you could (and to prevent bouncing off the bulkheads, probably should) perform all acts in a loose cocoon bag similar to the ones used currently by astronauts. There wouldn’t be any arguments about a dry spot afterward, though a thourough shower and laundry might be in order. (A note on space laundry; assuming your fabric is durable enough, you could just expose it to vacuum for a few seconds and agitate out the resulting dry residue, a process described by Heinlein in the short story, “Misfit”.)
Shuttle astronauts having sex? Sorry, have you seen the accomodations? And despite claims that offical experiments would be classified, there is in fact no rationale for supressing the existence and knowledge of such experiements. They might not appear on the NASA Quest home page, but there wouldn’t be any suppression. I find it unlikely (but not impossible) that it’s happened, and even if so it hasn’t been part of the mission experiment roster.
