Experts Ponder Whether the Earth Will Move in Space

They are the questions people seem impossibly, endlessly curious about: Has there been sex in space? And would it even work?

There probably hasn’t been sex in space. But with NASA and even private tour companies eyeing the possibility of living in space, it is only a matter of time.

“When we get civilians in space, those hotels are going to have to work out the ergonomics of this,” said Harvey Wichman, who heads the Aerospace Psychology Laboratory at Claremont McKenna College and is a consultant to MirCorp, the company that has leased the former Russian space station for commercial space travel.

More creative questions center on whether weightless sex is even possible.

“Two people on a bed, neither held still, floating in air--it’s tricky,” said Wichman. But not impossible.

An oft-repeated story, recounted in the book “Life in Space” by former NASA consultant G. Harry Stine, is that weightless sex was simulated--after hours and unofficially--in a neutral buoyancy tank NASA keeps for astronaut training at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

In Stine’s account, it was possible but difficult for two people. The act worked much better, he said, when a third person assisted by holding one of the others in place.

“People will figure out ways,” Wichman said.

When planning for long-term space travel, psychologists ponder sex because of its potential for causing tension among crew members, a common problem at Antarctic research bases.

The issue is not so much sex, say psychologists, as relationships. There can be painful breakups with nowhere to hide. And, of course, there is jealousy.

“If you’ve got one to two women and 16 to 18 men, it can get pretty icky,” said JoAnna Wood, a Baylor University psychologist and NASA consultant.

Abstinence has been the rule for astronauts on shuttle missions. They have no privacy and are on display to mission control 24 hours a day. Currently, sex is a topic that NASA officials would rather not discuss.

“It’s not really an area of interest,” said NASA Chief Scientist Kathie Olsen.

But NASA may have to deal with sex if the agency decides to send astronauts on a three-year, round-trip voyage to Mars. Various ideas on how to handle the sex issue range from sending an all-woman crew to allowing married astronaut couples to make the voyage.

It’s also probable that astronauts, who can train for years for even a short mission, would be willing to forgo earthly pleasures for the chance to be the first to step onto another planet.

“These people are experts in delayed gratification,” Wood said. “If anyone can handle it, they can.”