Sex In Space Hoax Roundup

Like every proud American who has sexual fantasies about green-skinned Orion Slave Dancers, I was crushed when I found out the secret NASA mission to test sexual positions in space (strictly for the good of humanity, of course) was in reality a a Bigfoot-in-a-freezer-sized hoax.

Maybe NASA’s astronauts just aren’t drinking enough. Has NASA not gotten the memo that the world’s most popular social lubricant turns any boring space flight into a zero-G Nude Twister party of cosmic proportions?. Puritan NASA acknowledged back in 2007 it may have once or twice allowed its astronauts to blast into space with cocktails in hand — the way Nature intended — and at least one astronaut enjoyed a wee tipple on the Moon. But it was Sunday. It was Communion wine. Nice try, NASA, but you don’t get any Drunken Space Slut Points for letting Buzz Aldrin go to mass on Sunday. In fact, you lose Drunken Space Slut Points.

The fuss around “sex in space” studies at NASA got its biggest boost back in 2000, and it’s been showing up now and then ever since. It didn’t actually originate in 2000 — it’s much older than that — but it got a Stage 2 boost with a little piece of misinformation promulgated by French astronomer and science writer Pierce Kohler who claimed in his 2000 book Mir: The Final Mission that NASA had researched the topic in 1996, because he had a leaked sooper seekrit report that said so. At the time, he told The Guardian:

“The issue of sex in space is a serious one,” [Kohler] says. “The experiments carried out so far relate to missions planned for married couples on the future International Space Station, the successor to Mir. Scientists need to know how far sexual relations are possible without gravity.”

He cites a confidential NASA report on a space shuttle mission in 1996. A project codenamed STS-XX was to explore sexual positions possible in a weightless atmosphere.

Twenty positions were tested by computer simulation to obtain the best 10, he says. “Two guinea pigs then tested them in real zero-gravity conditions. The results were videotaped but are considered so sensitive that even NASA was only given a censored version.”

[Link.]

Twenty positions? WOOO-HOOO! But wait, there’s more! As Guardian writer Jon Henley described it in a much later article:

According to Kohler’s book, the article said, there existed a confidential Nasa report, to which he had gained access, on a space shuttle mission in 1996 during which a project codenamed STS-XX was to explore precisely which sexual positions were possible in a weightless atmosphere; two guinea pigs had reportedly tested the 10 positions deemed most suitable for a spot of the old zero-gravity how’s-your-father. The report, again according to Kohler’s book, concluded that only four positions were in fact possible in space without “mechanical assistance” (the missionary position was not one of them). It added, tantalisingly, that a videotape, albeit censored, existed of the experiment.

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STS, incidentally, is the designator for U.S. shuttle missions, which are numbered consecutively (same as Apollo-11, Apollo-12, etc). The truth is I can’t figure out why the Guardian is referencing STS-XX…maybe because STS-XXX would be so obvious that no one would believe it. The actual report in question used by Kohler for his 2000 book cites STS-75 as the one on which the alleged sex research took place. The problem? The report in question, known as Document 12-571-3570, was first posted to the Usenet group Alt.sex in November, 1989.

That was seven years before STS-75, which flew in 1996, took place. Kohler rediscovered it and thought it was real, inspiring Snopes.com to call him “Pierre Kohler, a French astronomer and scientific writer who’s apparently new to this game.”

The Snopes page on the Shuttle Sex Hoax, incidentally, has the whole text of the “report.” It’s pretty awesome.

As to the question of just how likely it is that sex has occurred on U.S. space flights, James Oberg has this to say:

Although spacecraft are commonly thought to be crowded and lacking in privacy, shuttle missions with Spacelab modules do provide extra room as well as private space in small bunks with sliding doors. In addition, manned space vehicles tend to be very noisy, with loud fans and other mechanical equipment providing a background din.

Consequently, experts who spoke privately with UPI do not consider it implausible that men and women in space have on occasion engaged in traditional off-hours paired recreational activities. “I’d be astonished if it hasn’t happened,” one told UPI, “and it’s nobody else’s business.”

[Link.]

Oberg, however, makes the classic error in his article that most sex in space commentators seem to make. He implies that sex in space would be restricted (or even more likely) to coed missions. That’s utterly ridiculous; I’ve seen Sex Trek.

The truth is, for fans of internet weirdness, it just doesn’t get any better than when you combine astronauts and sex. Want proof? The first comment on this video from Packing for Mars author Mary Roach about the zero-G sex hoax is as follows:

“The God-king doth totally get it on in space with thine galactic harem all the time.”

Roach’s book, incidentally, features lots about sex in space. Packing for Mars concerns many of the issues considered by the Hundred Year Spaceship Project, but aimed at travel to Mars.

There is a serious side to all this Barbarellan mumbo-jumbo, though, and it’s not actually about sex in space; it’s about the way that humans (particularly Americans and other English speakers) deal with the very idea of sex. In the world of the news, “Sex in space” means one thing and one thing only…heterosexual intercourse. That makes absolutely no sense. Why do so many articles imagine that sex occurs between two people and two people only, always of opposite gender? The vast majority of sexual encounters, for most people, are solo affairs. If it really wanted to know, would NASA honestly not even consider asking its astronauts if any of them ever masturbated or had a wet dream in space? NASA may be controlled by puritans, but it’s not controlled by idiots. Or maybe that was considered an invasion of an astronaut’s privacy, in an environment where they’re already having their privacy basically obliterated.

Something tells me the Soviets probably asked their cosmonauts whether they masturbated in space. Maybe they even had a policy on it, since the Russians are weirdly businesslike when it comes to sex.

All I know is that if there’s one nation likely to beat the US in the Sex In Space Race, it’s the country with blow-up doll races and multiple competing cat circuses in one city. You just can’t compete with that kind of savoir-faire.

Image: The Pugnacious Contrarian.