Rarely does a single topic invoke such interest, humor and popularity than sex. If you throw space exploration into the mix, you get the "alien" (and genuinely weird) subject of space sex.
What's more, although sex is one of the most basic of human functions, space sex is one of the greatest unknowns in the history of manned spaceflight -- apart from a few hushed rumors, sex in space has never been attempted. However, as we are about to discover, future human sexuality in space -- particularly in interstellar space -- may not be very familiar... or even desirable (for procreation purposes, at least).
So, there I was on the phone, with my Discovery News colleagues, discussing an article that appeared in the Daily Mail [ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2044749/Sex-space-The-survival-human-race-depend-it.html ] in the wake of last week's 100 Year Starship Study [ http://www.100yss.org/ ] (100YSS) symposium in Orlando, Fla. Of course sex wasn't the main thrust of the symposium, it was the awesome task facing mankind should we decide to become an interstellar race, sex in zero-G just made a fantastic news hook.
But should we truly become a star-hopping civilization, how would we fill the time between the stars? Well there's Tracy's suggestion, but in the interest of continuing the human race beyond Earth's atmosphere (and gravity), some interesting questions of sex (and, presumably, Karma Sutra poses) will arise.
Let's face it, interstellar space travel isn't for wimps, so the first interstellar spaceship will most likely be unmanned. Unless you're an anatomically-correct robot, then I'm thinking space sex won't feature very highly on the interstellar to-do list.
For example, Project Icarus [ http://www.icarusinterstellar.org/ ] -- headed by regular Discovery News contributor Richard Obousy [ http://news.discovery.com/space/interstellar-warpship-richard-obousy.html ] -- is one such study into sending mankind's influence to a nearby star. Using fusion propulsion, the Icarus starship will need to traverse the light-years to arrive at (or fly by) another star within the time frame of a human lifetime. Let's say 50 years.
After all, if the Voyager 1 probe -- the fastest-moving man-made object in space -- was aimed at Proxima Centauri (the nearest stellar neighbor), it would take in the ballpark of 100,000 years to get there. Ouch. If you think we humans are naturally quarantined from the rest of the galaxy, you wouldn't be far wrong.
In terms of cosmic timescales of millions or billions of years, 100,000 years is tiny. But for human experience, this is a horrid situation. Thousands of civilizations have come and gone in that time frame; waiting 100,000 years to reach another star is just plain silly.
Hence why DARPA, with the help of NASA, set up the whole 100 Year Starship Study in the first place. Be sure to keep up with the mind-boggling Icarus Project, a team of scientists and engineers all providing original content to Discovery News, describing every aspect of a 50 year mission to another star. Space may be big, but it doesn't mean we can't think big. Icarus is one of the hopeful contenders for the 100YSS $500,000 prize to further develop their concept.
But sex wasn't far away from the symposium's agenda, especially when considering that eventually human beings may want to make the trip beyond the solar system -- for what reason, apart from pure exploration-sake, is far from certain at this stage.
But this discussion is moot considering the kind of human-rated vehicle we'd have to build to make the trip. Assuming warp-driven spacecraft won't be a reality for the immediate future, our future interstellar travelers will spend their lives in an interstellar craft. In fact, it's conceivable that generations of people will live out their lives forever gliding through the interstellar void.
These starships wouldn't just be incredible technological feats, they'd also be the grandest social experiment ever attempted!
So these long-duration vehicles will have to address the gravity issue (perhaps with artificial gravity-creating centrifuges) and they will need to be self-sustaining. In short, barring any serious overhauls of the human physiology through technological or genetic means, the starship will need to provide everything we need for an interstellar civilization to thrive. The sex thing will probably come as natural to interstellar humans as it does to their terrestrial counterparts.
But what will we do once we arrive at our first interstellar destination? Will we colonize the first "habitable" planet we come across? What if we need to adapt our destination to make it suitable for human habitation?
"Not only are we bad at terraforming, but we don't have the life span or the attention span to carry it through," said Andreadis. "Terraforming is a failure of the imagination. It's like people who take those expensive trips to Paris and eat at McDonald's."
Alternatively, rather than changing alien environments to suit us, perhaps we can change ourselves to adapt to alien environments.
"We will have to grow up and do self-directed evolution, realizing that what comes out of the other end may not be human," she added. "If we stake our future among the stars, we must change for the journey and the destination."
So, although sex in space will always be a headline-grabber and an excuse to post pictures of Jane Fonda in various famous Barbarella poses (top, sorry, couldn't resist), the bigger picture is whether or not we'd even need a basic human impetus like sex to maintain a human presence throughout the cosmos.
This is especially true if, as Andreadis points out, our interstellar descendants aren't even human.
"Chick," 71, And Man, 54, Busted In Naked Car Romp
Cops found couple in back seat of steamy Buick Regal
OCTOBER 5, 2011
A naked 71-year-old woman and her equally clothes-free male companion, 54, were arrested last month for indecent exposure after a Michigan cop found them trysting in the back seat of a Buick Regal that was rocking gently and had its windows steamed over, according to a police report.
When the officer opened the vehicle’s rear door and asked the nude couple what they were doing, Tim Adams offered a concise answer. “I’m fucking this chick,” he said.
Yes, Adams referred to his septuagenarian consort, Rita Daniels, as a “chick.”
According to a City of Farmington Police report [ http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/senior-car-sex?page=0 ], Daniels’s 2002 Buick (license plate: DIVA 145) was in a shopping center parking lot, adjacent to a restaurant whose customers, including a 10-year-old-boy, apparently had a view of the illicit nighttime action on September 3.
Officer Andrew Morche noted that the car’s windows “were covered with heavy condensation,” and that Daniels was atop Adams “and the two were engaged in sexual activities.” The pair was parked in a spot outside the restaurants Luigi’s and Tre Sorelle (which can be seen in this Google Street View image [ http://i.cdn.turner.com/dr/teg/tsg/release/sites/default/files/assets/theoldsexscene.jpg ]).
A police investigation determined that the couple’s courtship was a brief one. They had met for drinks at a nearby bar “before moving to the back seat of the Buick.” When questioned by cops, neither Daniels nor Adams--both of whom were unsteady and smelled of booze--knew the other’s name. A Breathalyzer test recorded Daniels’s blood alcohol content as .15, nearly twice the state limit.
Daniels and Adams were busted for indecent exposure and disorderly intoxication and booked into the local jail, where they were held until sobriety returned. While in custody, cops noted, “Adams decided to strip to his underwear.”
Misdemeanor charges against Daniels and Adams, who are pictured in the above mug shots, are pending in Michigan's 48th District Court.
NASA Telescope Confirms Alien Planet in Habitable Zone By Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer
– 8 hrs ago
This story was updated at 12:15 p.m. ET.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft has confirmed the discovery of its first alien world in its host star's habitable zone — that just-right range of distances that could allow liquid water to exist — and found more than 1,000 new explanet candidates, researchers announced today (Dec. 5).
The new finds bring the Kepler space telescope's total haul to 2,326 potential planets in its first 16 months of operation.These discoveries, if confirmed, would quadruple the current tally of worlds known to exist beyond our solar system, which recently topped 700.
The potentially habitable alien world, a first for Kepler, orbits a star very much like our own sun. The discovery brings scientists one step closer to finding a planet like our own — one which could conceivably harbor life, scientists said.
"We're getting closer and closer to discovering the so-called 'Goldilocks planet,'" Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., said during a press conference today. [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]
The newfound planet in the habitable zone is called Kepler-22b. It is located about 600 light-years away, orbiting a sun-like star.
Kepler-22b's radius is 2.4 times that of Earth, and the two planets have roughly similar temperatures. If the greenhouse effect operates there similarly to how it does on Earth, the average surface temperature on Kepler-22b would be 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius).
Hunting down alien planets
The $600 million Kepler observatory launched in March 2009 to hunt for Earth-size alien planets in the habitable zone of their parent stars, where liquid water, and perhaps even life, might be able to exist.
Kepler detects alien planets using what's called the "transit method." It searches for tiny, telltale dips in a star's brightness caused when a planet transits — or crosses in front of — the star from Earth's perspective, blocking a fraction of the star's light.
The finds graduate from "candidates" to full-fledged planets after follow-up observations confirm that they're not false alarms. This process, which is usually done with large, ground-based telescopes, can take about a year.
The Kepler team released data from its first 13 months of operation back in February, announcing that the instrument had detected 1,235 planet candidates, including 54 in the habitable zone and 68 that are roughly Earth-size.
Of the total 2,326 candidate planets that Kepler has found to date, 207 are approximately Earth-size. More of them, 680, are a bit larger than our planet, falling into the "super-Earth" category. The total number of candidate planets in the habitable zones of their stars is now 48.
To date, just over two dozen of these potential exoplanets have been confirmed, but Kepler scientists have estimated that at least 80 percent of the instrument's discoveries should end up being the real deal.
More discoveries to come
The newfound 1,094 planet candidates are the fruit of Kepler's labors during its first 16 months of science work, from May 2009 to September 2010. And they won't be the last of the prolific instrument's discoveries.
"This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin," Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.
Mission scientists still need to analyze data from the last two years and on into the future. Kepler will be making observations for a while yet to come; its nominal mission is set to end in November 2012, but the Kepler team is preparing a proposal to extend the instrument's operations for another year or more.
Kepler's finds should only get more exciting as time goes on, researchers say.
"We're pushing down to smaller planets and longer orbital periods," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead at Ames.
To flag a potential planet, the instrument generally needs to witness three transits. Planets that make three transits in just a few months must be pretty close to their parent stars; as a result, many of the alien worlds Kepler spotted early on have been blisteringly hot places that aren't great candidates for harboring life as we know it.
Given more time, however, a wealth of more distantly orbiting — and perhaps more Earth-like — exoplanets should open up to Kepler. If intelligent aliens were studying our solar system with their own version of Kepler, after all, it would take them three years to detect our home planet.
"We are getting very close," Batalha said. "We are homing in on the truly Earth-size, habitable planets."
You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcomand on Facebook.
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