Comments on: Sex in space!

By: Clifford

Clifford — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 14:19:58 +0000

Italo, the pregnancy takes place in the person’s own frame of reference, (their “rest frame” is the term) and so it will take the same about of time. 9 months.
It would, however, seem to take a bit longer from the point of view of the grand-parents-to-be back on earth, especially if the ship was moving at significantly high velocity….

cheers,

-cvj

By: Italo

Italo — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 13:01:32 +0000

If Einstein’s theory is correct and time is relative, how long would a 9 month pregnancy take during prolonged space travel…less than, more than, less but seem like more, more but seem like less?

By: Uncle Bubba

Uncle Bubba — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 05:27:46 +0000

If you want to see an hilarious depiction of the breakdown in communications on a long space voyage, rent the movie “Dark Star.” An all male crew, no sex, a communal descent in pathological depression, a dead mission leader who feels neglected, an alien beachball, and a very large bomb that thinks it’s God.

By: janet

janet — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 04:39:16 +0000

Yeah. Actually, my interpretation of the novel was that even for Heinlein the issue wasn’t men and women so much as depending on “compatibility” vs. a disciplined military command structure. Of course, we don’t have to agree with him about how well that works.

By: Sean

Sean — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 04:32:05 +0000

Adultery and murder, of course. The all-male crew is not going to solve any problems.

By: janet

janet — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 03:49:20 +0000

Which Stranger in a Strange Land scenario did you have in mind — the computer picking the perfectly compatible crew of married couples, the perfectly compatible crew descending into adultery and murder, or the all-male crew that gets the job done?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:45:37 +0000

Let’s just hope the robots don’t start cavorting with each other.
Sean said:

a cursory inspection didnâ€™t turn up anything nearly as off-color as youâ€™d find in a novel by a recently indicted former high-ranking White House staffer

Whoa! Check out that link, people!

By: loonunit

loonunit — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:06:30 +0000

I don’t get it — the pregnancy issue aside, why is sex in space a problem? News flash: sex acts a mediator. People who are having sex have an extra psychological motivator pushing them to work things out. It’s when there’s no sex at all that the real problems start to happen…

As for robots: yeah, sure. But have you heard how crabs in a bucket can never escape? Because everytime one of them looks like it’s about to make a break for freedom, the other crabs will gang up on it and pull the rogue crab back into the bucket? Everytime I hear that story, I have this weird vision, in which the bucket is an allegory for the Earth and the crabs represent mankind…

AND THEN A METEOR HITS THE BUCKET AND ALL OF THE CRABS DIE.

So yeah. Sex in space!

By: Elliot

Elliot — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 16:24:24 +0000

BGS: Conceived vs. full developed are separate issues. (no pun intended) The baby could be conceived in space then develop back on earth.

Elliot

By: Uncle Al

Uncle Al — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 16:03:47 +0000

Extended isolation of dense populations with volumetric confinement in a military setting is in hand - the Navy. For submariners, individual males ship out but couples return six months later. The British Navy was all rum, sodomy, and the lash. Contemporary integrated gender ships have astounding pregnancy rates (and synchronized menstruation).

Mars passengers would be fried by radiation (International Space Station Freedom FUBAR Space Hole One, less 91 cm of lead shielding atmospheric equivalent but still inside the magnetosphere). Folks breathing for a year in hermetic isolation require an awful lot of stowage no matter how you engineer it, ditto accumulating solid waste re the New Orleans Superdome recently.

Will NASA do laundry other than edible wearables?

NR-1 is the smallest class of nuclear submarine, massing 400 tonnes fully loaded with a crew of 12. One imagines a cheap spacefaring retrofit swapping ocean thingies for stowage… the heads are already pressurized and valved… but NASA has no heavy lifter. Eight Space Scuttle solid fuel boosters ringing a Saturn MLV-V-3 booster would loft about 700 tonnes (reduce dead weight with aluminum-scandium alloy skin). Launch a few from the planarized summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro and hope the surgically sterilized crew doesn’t embrace a ditzy religion en route.

By: bittergradstudent

bittergradstudent — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 16:00:05 +0000

I’m no biologist, but would pregnancy even work in space? Isn’t it true that prolonged space trips tended to erode bones in astro/cosmonauts? Would a fetus be able to grow a well-formed skeleton?

By: Elliot

Elliot — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 15:33:14 +0000

Its obvious that machines are a better scientific choice for long space missions but without the political $$$ to get the missions funded it becomes moot. The idea of human space travel is visceral and more likely to receive popular and therefore political support.

So here is a question to ponder any predictions on when the first human offspring to be concieved in space will be born?

By: Kim

Kim — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 15:24:17 +0000

I agree with Pyracantha. It’s idiotic to think about sending people on long space voyages, especially to places like Mars where robots can do very good science, as we’ve seen. Obviously, humans have more PR value, but they also have much more sophisticated and expensive maintenance needs, not least of which is their emotional health during a long, claustrophic, exceedingly dangerous space mission. It’s a no-brainer that if you coop people up in those conditions, they’re going to have inter-personal issues — not to mention possible psychoses.

And I’d pick Quakers or Buddhists over Jesuits any day.

By: enntea

enntea — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 14:43:28 +0000

Ever read “The Sparrow”? Basic premise is that after a civilization is discovered, the Jesuits are the first to make the decision that the trip has to be made. One wonders if a long-trip crew should be selected from a long-standing group that already has built-in reconciliation mechanisms.

By: Pyracantha

Pyracantha — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 07:42:31 +0000

Then why risk people and their emotional problems in space? It may be un-heroic and un-macho, but I think sending machines such as the wonderful Mars Rovers and the brave Cassini/Huygens to explore space and the planets makes much more sense, and you get more exploration for less expense and risk. A machine can go where vulnerable humans can’t, and you don’t have to entertain it in-flight.