Mission to Venus
According to new research, getting down while we’re way up high could theoretically cause health problems for spacefaring lovers.
James Bond may have given it a go in Moonraker, but experiments on mating plants by scientists at Montreal University show that weightlessness affects the way cells are transported inside living things, causing ‘traffic jams’ on the vital highways that connect different processes.
Although researcher Anja Geitmann said they could not draw any specific conclusions on the implications for animal – and human – sex in space, she added that intercellular transport is important in a variety of human cells.
Geitmann told LiveScience.com that many neural disease, including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntingdon’s are all related to this ‘trafficking’.
Sex in space is thought to have to become a certainty, as it is unlikely the couple on the Mars mission will want to abstain for the entire 16-month trip.
Still, if they need to conduct experiments, I’m willing to donate my body to science.
Good for you. They need to study the possibilities of drunkenness in space. After all, they are not going to want to refrain from drinking for the whole 16-month trip, right? :P
If you watch Babylon 5, the Earth Alliance has rotating ships (both military and civilian), at least until counter-grav technology is available (um, at the end of the series; see EAS Warlock).
I'm not sure we can create an artifical gravity well, but if we can, that'll be the next step (as long as it doesn't kill us in the process).
Time it so that you can accelerate to your maximum, and then decelerate until your velocity is 0 (on decelerating, the ceiling becomes the floor and the floor becomes the ceiling, but gravity's magnitude remains 1g). Repeat this till you get to mars.
"Trafficking"? That's vague.
But surely there's, ummm...emperical data...on this. We've had co-ed spacecraft for how long now?