-Caveat Lector-
THE TIMES
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 03 2001
Sex in space: thin blue line keeps crews in check
BY MARK HENDERSON, SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT
ASTRONAUTS on the International Space Station (ISS) have been supplied with DIY
pregnancy tests in case the
enforced intimacy of space travel prompts mixed crews to try for the 200-mile-high
club.
The test sticks have been included in the station's medical pack in one of Nasa's
first admissions that its
astronauts might have sex in orbit.
Although the US space agency has always taken a prudish attitude towards such
activity, the kits are intended
for its aftermath: female astronauts take a pregnancy test before launch and are not
allowed to fly if it is
positive.
Scientists know little about the effects of space travel, particularly those of
weightlessness, on human
embryos and any astronaut found to have become pregnant on board the ISS would almost
certainly be returned to
Earth at the earliest opportunity.
The station's present crew will not need the kits: all three are male. The crew they
replaced recently,
however, included a female flight engineer, Susan Helms, and the next crew but one
will also have a female
member, Peggy Whitson.
Details of the pregnancy test and directions on how to use it have emerged from a set
of leaked Nasa documents
on emergency and medical procedures obtained by the website SpaceRef.com. The
documents provide astronauts on
board the ISS with guidance on dealing with situations ranging from a crew-mate
becoming suicidal or psychotic
to diarrhoea, motion sickness, nosebleeds and dentistry. Nasa would not comment on the
handbook.
Keith Cowing, editor of SpaceRef.com and a former Nasa scientist, said that the tests
were clearly aimed at
detecting conceptions in orbit.
"Since the crew get a good physical exam before flight, and I doubt that anyone would
deliberately fly while
pregnant given our sparse knowledge of what might happen, one has to assume that this
test is to detect a
particular medical condition that developed while the individual in question was
already in space," he said.
"There is a rather short list of ways whereby this specific condition can arise. Nasa
never discusses the
possibility of sex in space, but it does not look like they're worried about what an
astronaut might have done
with her husband the night before launch."
It remains unclear whether or not the 200-mile-high club already has any members.
There is no suggestion that
any astronauts have had sex on board the ISS since its launch in 1998, but many
believe that the increasing
length of time spent on board - the last crew were in space for 165 days - makes it
more likely that such a
relationship will develop.
Harry Stine, a former Nasa technician, said that the agency had conducted experiments
in the simulated
weightlessness of a flotation tank, but never in space itself. In his book Living in
Space, Dr Stine, who died
in 1997, said that Nasa staff at the Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville,
Alabama, had used a buoyancy
tank that simulates low-gravity conditions to test the possibilities of weightless
sex. "It was possible but
difficult," he said, "and was made easier when a third person assisted by holding one
of the others in place."
Nasa has always been coy about the idea of sex involving its astronauts, but some
cosmonauts have been more
forthcoming. Valeri Polyakov, who spent 14 months on Mir between 1992 and 1993, said
to mission control
shortly before his return: "No need to say what we are longing for."
Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided on Times Newspapers'
standard terms and
conditions. To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from The Times, visit the
Syndication website.
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