Sex in Space?

I am ashamed to admit that I came rather late in life to the wonderfully entertaining and informative books of writer Mary Roach. Roach, I quickly came to find out, was the author of a number of books dealing with unique science-oriented subjects unlike any others I have come across.

Her books include such jewels as ‘Packing for Mars’, ‘Stiff’, ‘Gulp’, ‘Spirit’ and several others, all written with what is a most exceptionally amusing and humorous subtlety that few other writers ever seem to equal. At least in my broad experience.

As a science writer, Mary regularly delves into seldom explored areas of scientific human activity with both a keen understanding of her subject matter and a unique ability to ferret out information that is normally not covered by most stodgy science writers.

Her book ‘Packing for Mars’, for example, a book about preparing for human exploration of the solar system, focuses not just on physical hardware systems required for sustained space travel, but on the psychodynamics of human interaction in such a distinctly hostile environment as space constitutes. ‘Stiff’, another excellent work, deals with death and the involvement human beings have with the dead and dying (including mortuary practices, aesthetics, cultural nuances and so forth). ‘Spirit’ investigates the world of the paranormal, while ‘Gulp’ is a book written about the human alimentary tract and all that relates to the human digestive/intestinal system. You get the idea.

What marks her books off from others is her irreverent eagerness to poke into those more exotic and arcane nooks and crannies of her chosen subject, but with a light-hearted frankness that is both disarming and highly interesting. Mary is no naïf. Although possessed of ‘only’ a baccalaureate, she has proven time and time again in her scientific investigations that she has a rare combination of expert knowledge and humor quite uncommon to the erudite academic world.

At any rate, if you’ve never run across Mary Roach, you’re definitely missing out on some fabulously entertaining and highly informative writing.

Since my areas of special focus in aerospace investigations are life support, human factors and space bio-physiology, it would follow that I am also, by necessity and on occasion, interested in all related, adjunctive areas of inquiry, meaning that I frequently ‘wear’ (when appropriate) social anthropology, history and technical sciences hats (as it were) in my own writing discourses.

In ‘Packing for Mars’, Mary’s book about our preparations for space flight (chiefly the erstwhile upcoming plans to send a crewed spacecraft to the planet Mars in coming decades), the subject of human interactions comes to the fore quite often, since it doesn’t take much imagination to understand that whenever human beings are physically confined in small spaces for protracted periods of time, things can get rather complicated in a short time.

The trip to Mars will take an estimated 7 months or so and using the currently being developed technology that is available to us, the crew space on board a theoretically Mars-capable craft will be by necessity rather circumscribed by the scant dimensions of their habitat. The engineering challenges implicit in designing a spacecraft that will make the trip and perform all its designated mission objectives is exponentially complex, but what is so often overlooked are the ‘human’ aspects of the mission. That is, how the crew will be able to cooperatively and harmoniously interact during that protracted flight (i.e. get along without trying to kill each other from sheer frustration).

Mary Roach covers this to a satisfying degree in her fascinating book, ‘Packing for Mars’, citing a number of existing NASA and Russian studies concerned not just with human beings in space, but how they will be able to cooperatively remain in close proximity for such a long period of time without suffering both short and long-term untoward psychological effects. These studies include (as may well be imagined) the previously mentioned ‘psychodynamics’ concerns; in that regard, another, closely related area is that of how to handle the matter of ‘sex in space’.

Roach does not pull any punches when it comes to her investigations and cites several studies of water mammals (porpoises, sea otters and so forth) who procreate in a water environment. Naturally enough, due to the nature of lowered gravity environments, there are a number of potential concerns regarding the human ability to mate in these conditions, and since water tanks mimic to some extent the effects of lowered gravity, NASA has used these useful research adjuncts for many years to partially simulate the effects of lowered gravity on astronauts. I’m sure the Russians have followed suit with their own water-tank researches.

NASA is, as may well be imagined, rather coquettish about certain intimacies of human behavior, not least being questions relating to the possibility of mating in so-called ‘zero-G’. So coquettish, in fact, that NASA doesn’t even like to spend much time discussing rather unexciting things like urine-containment garments.

I learned this myself first hand when I asked a good friend (who is a former SR-71 pilot, now retired) about the so-called ‘piddle-pack’ system Blackbird crew members wore under their pressure suits. That system, for the benefit of the uninitiated, consists of a plastic bag filled with a solidifying powder that is connected to the crew member’s penis via a long tube and a condom (distally, fitted to the glans). The idea being that when the crew member relieves himself, the urine flows into the bag where it quickly solidifies, thus sparing a mess should the bag inadvertently be pierced. My friend, who used to wear this system on all his long-distance flights, was so loathe to discuss this that he actually refused to do so.

Since he was a full Colonel and a rather experienced ‘right stuffish’ sort of guy, and since I am a life support wonk who regularly deals with all types of bio-support mechanisms crews rely upon, I thought he would have no problem at all describing his personal experiences with that important item of life support equipment. Nope! He wouldn’t say word one on the subject.

Of course, I was already quite familiar with the system in reference (as he should have known), but I wanted to hear his first-hand experience with having a tube taped to his nether member for hours at a time! No dice!

Getting back to Roach’s book, she takes quite an intensive look at the nuances of how astronauts (and Cosmonauts) deal with the natural and normal human sexual urges. Already cited are the water mammal studies (which were quite interesting), since porpoises must mate in a lowered density, watery environment that makes it difficult to ‘thrust’ into a vaginal orifice. They further lack appendages (hands and feet), which are a definite asset when grasping a female with the aim of achieving coitus successfully.

[I should reveal here that porpoises are equipped with penises that DO have a certain dexterous ability to grasp and hold, amazingly enough. Even female porpoises are able to grasp and hold things with their strong vaginal orifices, as evidence presented of an instance in which a female porpoise grasped and held a male (human) diver’s ankle once demonstrated at Sea World.]

Humans (on dry land, at least) have very dexterous upper extremities and certainly have the advantage over porpoises, since they (their hands and legs) can be used to grip a sexual partner’s body as tightly as needed to penetrate a vaginal recess sufficiently to ejaculate. Speaking from personal experience, I can attest that there are few more satisfying things for a male involved in coitus than grasping a woman’s body firmly in the process of getting a leg-over.

In the wild, animals are often mistaken for being engaged in a hostile, combative act when observed (by the uninitiated) during mating, since much roughness is often employed by the male (not limited to biting, grasping a neck or back with teeth, pinning the female forcefully, etc.) to enter the female vaginal recess and stay there long enough to ejaculate. Human sex, since most of it is consensual, is less a battle and more of a pleasure-inducing experience (in theory, at least).

Roach tells us that her efforts to extract candid details about NASA’s experimental studies dealing with human mating in space (as few as they have been) were invariably met by an embarrassed silence, or at best a marked reluctance to discuss the matter openly. The Russians, for their part, were somewhat less coy about discussing things, since Russians are far more open about nonpolitical things in general terms and certainly less affected by the constraints of so-called ‘Christian morality’ in the sharing of their insights and opinions on the prospects of sex in space.

It seems that Russians have actually engaged in coital acts in orbit (aboard the early Soviet Mir space station); specifically, two Cosmonauts (a man and a woman who were married secretly before they began their cooperative mission) reportedly did get a bit of nooky up there, several hundred miles above the planet. No such corresponding circumstances appear to exist as regards NASA manned flights (or stays on the ISS).

Roach does tell us that she was able to determine that the Russians (and she suspects a few Americans) did relieve the procreative urges somewhat through masturbation, although prolonged privacy in orbit is so rare as to almost be non-existent. In fact, an American flight surgeon back in the Apollo days actually went on record recommending that astronauts actively engage in masturbation, since that is acknowledged by some medical experts as being one way to effectively relieve seminal-vessicular pressure…a condition suspected of being a contributing factor in some prostate infections.

However, again, due to the fact that many (if not most) Americans are possessed of religious beliefs that frown on such things as ‘wasting one’s seed’ (and no less to the utter lack of privacy in contemporaneous spacecraft), it is not likely that this is ever actually done (at least by Americans). The Russians, being an order of magnitude temperamentally less shy about the hormonal necessities, were probably a lot less reluctant to engage in something like that (although one always needs to be mindful of the very strong Russian proscription against anything that could be misconstrued as constituting (even vaguely) homosexual behavior).

Still, interesting food for thought, since longer and longer space missions (such as a journey to Mars) will result in more concerns of this sort (e.g. sexual attractions, relationships, conjugal affairs, etc.). Human sexual activity (or at least sexual urges) is naturally implicit in just about any human affair you can think of.

One of the many amusing details Roach focuses on relates to possible NASA experiments that may have involved human mating in water tanks used for lowered-gravity studies. The question prompted the reflection ‘Why would anyone want to risk using a NASA water tank for something like this when the same results could be achieved in an ordinary private swimming pool?’

Certainly a logical observation.

That prompted some further tangential reflection on my part as I read the book, since way back when I was an undergrad at college, my friends and I would occasionally sneak into the college’s large, Olympic-sized pool for a nocturnal swim. Most of us were on the swim team and several were also National Aquatic Institute WSIs (Water Safety Instructors, a sort of way advanced Red Cross Life Guardish sort of water certification), so we were almost as at home in large bodies of water as we were on dry land. Or so we all thought. Let me explain.

I well recall one specific late-night pool rendezvous in which my then-girlfriend and I had had a bit more wine than usual at a prior party, that evening.

Of course, she had a nubile, aquatically fit swimmer’s body that would do justice to a water gazelle and was clad in merely one of those tight Nylon tank-suits we all competed in. Even under the scant moonlight, every luscious curve of her slender, but well-proportioned body shimmered enticingly and with my lowered inhibitions already bottoming out (thanks in no small part to the wine) it’s no mystery what happened next.

Both of us were messing around in the water…I guess we were imagining we were porpoises or something like that (water, wine & youthfulness do things like that to you)…but pretty soon we were lip-locking pretty ferociously and one thing quickly led to another. Instead of shucking our suits, since it was always possible that we could be discovered illegally enjoying our late-night swim in the closed pool, we left our suits on while we tried to have sex.

Unlimbering my own apparatus (we’re in the water, mind you), I pulled that part of her suit away from her pubis and tried to enter her. It wasn’t easy, since both of us were also having to support ourselves by treading water while doing this. Complicating things was the fact her body was as slippery to grasp as mine was (although the Nylon suit did offer a small bit of added fricative resistance), naturally. Finally, after several tries (both on the surface and down below, under the water), I think I finally got a few thrusts in before we both inhaled a bit of water and had to give it up. It was a hella lot harder to do that either of us had imagined.

Ultimately, I hit on the idea of positioning both of us near the egress ladder, near the shallower end of the pool and this positional stability enabled me to take her from behind (doggie style), both still clad in our suits. The success was a bit brief, however, as all the excitement caused me to shoot my load somewhat prematurely (before she had started getting fully caught up in things herself) and before long we climbed out of the pool, settling for some post-coital snuggling and face-sucking in some shadows near the pool’s inner wall. Fortunately, no one happened by the pool to observe what they might have mistaken for a couple of wild porpoises (or stupid humans) making splashy boom-boom and an hour or so later we climbed back over the fence and returned undetected to the dorms.

I guess we were lucky, since there was no conception resulting from all that carelessness, although I would guess that whatever sperm made its way into her was considerably diluted by the highly Chlorinated fluid we were immersed in.

Thinking back on that event further, I am reminded that the doggie-style coital act enables the male’s penis to penetrate a woman’s vagina much deeper than is normally the case in the so-called ‘Missionary position’…an effect that is also supposedly effective in helping conceive male offspring (or so say the specialists who are experts on human sexual reproduction techniques).

[I later did help conceive a baby with a lovely female physician I was hooking up with (not in a pool), but she had to have it terminated (D&C) due to her being still in her residency (not a good time to have babies and start out as a parent). I’ll always look back on that event with a certain melancholy and sadness, since I’ve otherwise never had any of my own children. Given that we preferred rather brisk (understatement…it was more like two wolves mating) lordotic ‘doggie-style’ sex, I’ve little doubt it would have been a boy, too. Sigh! So you see, when it comes to understanding the importance of things like the effects of lowered gravity on mating, having appendages for grasping and efficiently harnessing the natural coital advantages of a 1-G environment, I am no casual slouch…and I was probably light-years ahead of NASA in conducting these personal experiments of mine, LoL]

Mary Roach goes on in a similar vein in ‘Packing for Mars’, exploring the ‘what-ifs’ of space sex although she does not slip into (no pun intended) any sort of ‘less discrete’ personal anecdotes as I have, here.

I highly recommend ANY of her excellent books to all of you. If you fail to find them uniquely interesting, then it’s probably time for you to pack up your eight pseudopodal appendages and call the Mother Ship to take you back to that distant galactic planet from whence you came, LoL!