What it's like to have sex in space


Picture: NASA via Getty Image

If it’s true what they say, we’ll all be making trips to the moon and Mars soon enough.
After all, one international programme to put people on Mars has already begun selecting and training people for a launch in 2031.

But if we’re spending that much time in space (it will take an estimated 21 months to get to Mars) we’re going to need to know how to have out-of-this-world sex.

Literally.



Well, there’s a few things to overcome, and not just the dilemma of where to find condoms on a planet with no shops.

First of all, Earth’s atmosphere protects us from most radiation, but that isn’t the case in space – and unfortunately our features and organs most sensitive to radiation are the ones crucial to sex.

When there’s the issue of microgravity – that thing that makes astronauts float around in their spaceships. But it also makes them lose muscle mass, and for female astronauts, it can stop their ovulation.

Not very conducive if you're trying to re-populate the earth after Donald Trump fires one too many missiles.

This video from Fivethirtyeight explains that while no humans are known to have had sex in space, there are some creatures who have managed it, but it's unclear how successful it's been.

And there’s a mountain of research that hasn’t been done yet, so a lot of the effects of space on our sexual abilities are unknown, but as the video explains, it seems to address a core question:

Do we need this planet to survive?