NASA must study sex in space: Scientists

Washington, Jan 13 (ANI): Experts have suggested that NASA must touch on the topic of space sex.

According to them, there haven't been any studies on whether a child be conceived in zero-G or how sex would even work in space.

Dr. Rhawn Joseph from the Brain Research Laboratory in California discusses everything from the social conditions that would push astronauts to have sex to the possibility of the first child being born on another planet.

"Human beings are sexual. They think about it a lot. So if you're on a trip to Mars, it's going to be dark out, you'll be in a long period of isolation, and there's not going to be a lot to do," Fox News quoted him as saying.

"There's a definite possibility that it could happen."

Joseph added that on the long space journeys that NASA takes, it would be impossible to expect astronauts not to form emotional ties.

"The Antarctic is comparable to space: It's extremely cold down there and you spend a lot of time indoors. So NASA and lot of organizations think that's a great analog to what it'll be like on Mars," Joseph said.

"And we see that researchers will go down there for extended periods of time in these extremely hostile conditions, and women will get pregnant. It's just part of normal behaviour," he added.

"So if you put an infant on Mars, they would adapt to varying degrees of the new environment. And after several generations, you'd have a new species," he said.

NASA does not take a position on sex in space. According to the "Astronaut Code of Professional Responsibility," astronauts are expected to adhere to "a constant commitment to honorable behavior," but NASA won't go much further than that.

Michael Finneran, a spokesman for NASA Langley Research Center, said, "Since it's not a NASA publication, and NASA is not currently engaged in any initiatives to colonize Mars, and NASA's not conducting any research on sex or reproduction in space or on Mars, we are unable to provide a comment on the matter."

"Send husbands and wives into space to have sex and do studies on it. It's got to be done if the long range goal is to go to other planets. Science marches on," Joseph concluded.

The article appears in The Journal of Cosmology. (ANI)