Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Fly Me to the Moon   [John Derbyshire]

Far more than you wanted to know about what astronauts do in space.

"The issue of sex in space is a serious one," [a French science writer] 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..."

Twenty? You mean ... there's more than one? Aren't any of these astronauts Republicans?

12/04 09:47 AMShare