[FPSPACE] Quest magazine gets randy

[Dwayne Allen Day]

The following article ran in today's Wired magazine.  I have to say I'm
not thrilled that my article is running in the same issue of Quest where a
cosmonaut discusses sex dolls.  Maybe Quest is hoping that they will get
bought out by Space.com...


DDAY


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Sex That's Out of This World
by Michelle Delio

2:00 a.m. Nov. 4, 2000 PST

Getting amorous while in orbit is a fantasy for some, and a serious
question for those with a  scientific thirst to know if having sex in
zero-gravity conditions would be fabulous or fraught with technical
difficulties.  Both desires are fed in the upcoming issue of Quest: The
History of Spaceflight Quarterly, which  features an article that
explores the history of sex in the United States and Russian space
programs.

It contains tasty tidbits about past plans to film a sex documentary on
board the Mir Space Station, allegations of adultery by two Russian
cosmonauts and specifics of the pornographic videos that were viewed
during space missions.

To write "The Psychological and Social Effects of Isolation on Earth and
in Space," Peter Pesavento interviewed scientists, psychologists,
astronauts and cosmonauts for an in-depth and personal piece which lays
bare the mysteries of how humans handle themselves - and, sometimes,
others - during extended space missions.

Acknowledging that outer-space sex is a rather racy topic for an
academic journal, Quest's editor, Prof. Stephen Johnson of the
University of North Dakota, said the article broke new ground in
discussing the social and psychological issues of space flight from a
historical and human perspective.

"Sexuality and gender relations are just one of several topics that the
author addresses, all of which have been issues in human space flight in
the past, and will be again in the future," Johnson said.

Pesavento focused his article on what he says is "the largest challenge
of long-term space flights": the need to have people return from their
missions in acceptable emotional and physical health.

In the piece, Pesavento points out the should-be-obvious fact that "if
humans are sexual beings on the ground, they also will be sexual beings
in space." It's a concept that NASA, publicly at least, allegedly
chooses to ignore.

According to Pesavento, NASA thinks that sex is just a very small part
of a more important issue: the lack of any physical connection with
loved ones when astronauts are in orbit.

Quest editor Scott Sacknoff added that he believes that since sex in the
United States is often a very controversial subject, NASA public
relations people simply steer clear of releasing any information about
what sorts of extracurricular activities might be happening up there.

"They could open up a can of worms if they had to publicize their
official policies for astronaut relations," Sacknoff said.

"I personally cannot picture NASA supporting efforts to film a movie on
the International Space Station where a sex scene takes place, such as
that which (Pesavento's) article mentions was proposed for Mir."

Consequently there is very little information available about NASA
astronauts' more amorous activities while in orbit.

In the book Living in Space, former NASA consultant G. Harry Stine, who
died in 1997 shortly after his book was published, said that the neutral
buoyancy tank that's used for astronaut training at Marshall Space
Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, was also used, both officially and

unofficially, to see whether people could shag sans gravitational pull.

According to Stine, it was "possible but difficult." Stine also
explained that the tank experiments revealed that sex in zero gravity
would be easier if a helpful astronaut was available to assist the
copulating couple by holding one of the two participants in place.
French astronomer Pierre Kohler, in his 1996 book The Final Mission,
alleged that astronauts conducted NASA-sponsored sexual research on a
space-shuttle mission in 1996.

Kohler's graphic descriptions of experiments that involved elastic belts
and inflatable tubes were hotly denied by NASA and were later found to
have originated with a parody piece that had been widely distributed on
various Internet news groups and websites. The Final Mission is now out
of print.

Pesavento said that the Russians have a more open attitude towards sex
in space, noting that the Institute of Biomedical Problems, a leading
Russian research institute in the field of space medicine and biology,
has been involved for decades in sex-related studies of living creatures
in
space.

The Quest article offers other salacious snippets of information for
the, uh, scientifically curious -- including astronaut Alan Bean's
comment that an all-male crew is a good way to prevent jealousy,
something he believes could be a problem with a mixed crew where not
everyone was
"participating."

"If some are doing it, you are going to want to. Hey, that fellas got a
big smile on his face, and that bugs me," Bean said.

Pesavento also laid some free-floating scraps of space sex gossip to
rest, such as the widespread story that cosmonauts Valeri Vladimirovich
Polyakov and Yelena Vladimirovna Kondakova were the first to explore the
highly personal potentials of zero gravity together.

And, since both are married to others, they were also accused of being
the first deep-space adulterers.

The story was covered in numerous newspapers, mostly in Europe, during
Polyakov and Kondakova's 1995 mission. Pesavento said that Polyakov
later denied that he'd had anything more than a professional
relationship with Kondakova.

But evidently Polyakov believed that substitutes for the real thing are
not a good idea either. He particularly eschewed the use of the sort of
inflatable friends that you can purchase in an adult bookstore.

The trouble with such toys, Polyakov was quoted in Quest as saying, is
that "anyone who is using such things may develop the so-called 'doll
syndrome,' or in other words, may start preferring the doll (to their
own spouse or loved one) even after (they return to Earth). People have
a sad
experience of using such things during long-lasting stays in Antarctica
and sea voyages."

http://www.spacebusiness.com/quest