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NASA Puts A Stop To Space Romance
electro-donkey writes "According to a New Scientist article, romantic entanglements among astronauts could derail long-haul space trips. A top-level NASA panel has decided, though it could alleviate boredom, space sex could cause trouble too. On a mission to Mars, for example, which would take up to 30 months, sexual conflict or infidelity could lead to a 'breakdown in crew functioning'."
...it could increase productivity because in the barren Martian landscape we would still have some sign of humanity around to keep us going.
"One could perhaps select for people who seem to have less need for sex, or at least don't use sex as a form of self-validation", a quote from some random psychologist not part of the NASA board, but happens to be quoted in this article (seriously...do journalists just accept anything that agrees with their news titles as evidence?).
Heh sex is a major part of all forms of life...why paint it in such a light. This is like moral judgement.
There is validity to both sides (free choice versus disruption of work), but I don't think personal matters should be part of NASA's decisions...it just seems to be outside of their jursidiction, if you will, especially on long-haul missions where astronauts are away from other human beings for long periods of time.
The one in who the sex isn't a bit "disfunctional". When the sex is concious, when it serves itself and not releasing of stress/coping with todays world (yeah, when it doesn't have neurotic background) one can be perfectly fine without it.
Trust me, NASA will find skilled enough psychologists to determine if candidates for Mars mission are up to the job in this regard.
One that hath name thou can not otter
McBride is going to try and screw everyone. The Pope will have hissy fits about the homosexuals. The married couple won't be able to stand being so close to eachother all the time and seek other relationships, thereby breaking both the lesbian and the gay couple. How's that supposed to keep the crew functioning?
The only two crews where no sex is not going to be a problem is an all male or an all female crew with no homo- and bisexuals, and only if there is enough porn on board.
I have an even better Idea .
Let's send 6 lesbians porn stars and a A film crew . Kills two birds with one stone , no space sex conflicts and you could fund the next Moon landing with "Star whores : A new elope "
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
No matter how weird things get, the air will clear when ground control calls to remind the crew, "if you miss the timing on this deorbit burn, you're all going to burn to death."
No Earth-based station simulation is going to completely capture the urgency of real space travel.
Then logically, either Darl or the Pope is not a person! (In this case, I highly suspect that Darl McBride is the guilty party)
"I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" -Jesus (John 14:6)
Noone feels left out and if they've lived together for years before on earth there's no reason to assume they're going to break down during flight either.
I'm completely serious btw.
Well, those might keep you happy for a while, but they surely won't keep you from hitting on the hottie next door!
hopelessly flawed. First they missmanage and over use an inefficiant air/spaceframe design. During which they get two crews killed needlessly. They have ignored repeated warnings from the manufacturer on one incident. They lose/destroy multiple multimillion dollar probes. Commission needless studies that in this case even duplicate earlier efforts. And just when I think that they have run out of stupidity they start the magnum project, and pursue hyper x as space transport.
The magnum project is supposed to provide a mars launch vehicle. It was estimated that the crew to mars would need approx 100 tons to be launched. Magnum is slated to lift far less than that requiring a slow and expensive orbital assembly period. Meanwhile the Russians have a nice reusable space vehicle called Energia. In its Vulcan config it can lift up to 175 tons and has been sucessfully launched with a good safety record (so far). But nasa cant be bothered with existing tech that works - we need expensive and buggy tech instead.
Hyper x - now it is a wonderfull device and I have great respect for it. It is just not what nasa is selling it to be. They claim it will be a space plane that will not use a rocket and fly at high speeds and even into orbit. Just one problem - SCRAM jets need a supersonic air flow at the intake and through the engine to even work. You just do not get that at subsonic speeds. The test data that I have seen thus far indicates that they have not even had it work below mach 5 yet and it needs to be boosted to speed by a pegasus rocket. Hyper x makes more sense as a return craft where speed can be a "bit" more easy to come by.
The really sad thing is that there are real high quality people working for nasa that are getting painted with an ugly brush here. Nasa has made wonderful contributions to military,comercial, and general aviation in the areas of new materials. wind tunnel research, new safety systems, new avionics systems, manuverability studies and developments, aircraft design and testing and many more. These hard working people are doing many things that are improving the world arround us and no one is talking about it. Instead we all sit back and notice what the PHBs that they are saddled with go on to the next idiotic stunt. Nasa needs new management from the top down, a swift kick, some better media coverage, LOTS more money - with a better oversite to make sure that it gets used intelligently, and support from the government and the average citizen - in that order. If they dont get all of that stuff soon they will become totally irrelevent. Which, in light of their tremendous achievements to date(Apollo 11 for one), and their enormous potential, would be a terrible loss.
Three days is more than I can usually handle without my brain going into a fit of chaos. If they really expect people to go 30 months without sex then they should provide medication that will reduce their sex drive. Even then you have basic human emotional needs which sex plays a part of so people would still probably have sex. Trying to go without sex will cause more problems than just planning for sex.
Send them up half male and half female with orders that they need to rotate partners on a daily basis. Well laid people with multiple partners they aren't previously attached to are less likely to get into jealous rages or similar problems. Expecting them to go without for 30 months is foolish and choosing to ignore the problem will work just about as well as not providing sex ed to horny highschool kids. These people are astronauts and know their lifes depend on working together. If they can't work together even when they hate each other (or worse - love each other) then they shouldn't be sent up.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
And how exactly would they enforce it? I mean, 30 months in a tin can, millions of kilometers from home, hell, even if they restricted each mission to only one sex at a time that wouldn't stop anything, know what I mean? *nudge* *nudge*
(what NASA will do if it decides to send George Bus^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H a moneky along with the human crew is anyones guess)
/. community that you're politically astute, would it?
/. mods, though.** clearing throat ** Let's send Dick Cheney up instead. At least then if two of the crew start to get involved in some hanky-panky, he will intervene by telling them to "Go fu*k yourselves", which he has a penchant for doing.
Ah, yes, it just wouldn't be a proper Slashdot thread with the totally inane and unnecessary Bush bashing just to (try to) prove to the rest of the
I guess that I'd better post this as AC. We all know how anti-anti-Bush posts get modded into oblivion by the "still pissed that Gore and Kerry lost" Slashdot mods.
Maybe if I put in an unnecessary Cheney insult I can sooth the ire of
But if others in your crew are having sex, and you don't get any. That would really make things difficult.
Exactly. This kind of thing runs deep down to the most primal level in our minds. Picture stags locking antlers for the right to knock boots with a female. I'm confident that a lot of us have had that nightmare where our girlfriend, or object of our affection, chooses another male (likely a close friend) after some sort of bizarre feather-spreading ritual and how it is anger-invoking, spirit-crushing and, ultimately, the worst feeling imaginable.
It makes sense when you look at the differences between guys and gals when it comes to discussing sex. Women tend to be very frank and discuss a lot of aspects about masturbation and sex with their boyfriends quite openly. Men, on the other hand, tend to stick to the less threatening 'look at the tits on her', and on the few occasions when discussions turn to personal experiences, we only want to talk about our own. Everyone just parrots the same 'Guess what I did with Sarah last night' diatribes and it becomes a game of one-upmanship over a few beers. Your friend thinks you are listening to him, when in your mind you have your hands over your ears, saying 'LALALA NOT LISTENING' while trying to think of a better story to prove how virile and red blooded you are.
On Slashdot, most of us have witnessed ACs attack posters on the grounds of their sex lives. Why is it that we judge success and validation almost soleley on the amount of physical partners? Why is it that many people would sacrifice or 'trade-it-all' for that bit more pussy? Refer to the Simpsons episode where Arty Ziff tells Homer that he is stinking rich, whereupon Homer retorts, 'Yet, you'd trade it all for one night with my wife' and Ziff agrees. We all find it funny, but is our laughter half agreement and harrowing realisation?
So fast-forward to a space situation where you are very trapped and small in numbers. A sexual relationship would be a ticking time-bomb. Can you imagine a crew of two men and one woman, with a couple giggling between them and disappearing off to the 'bedroom', leaving poor old Joe No-fuck to man the controls? It doesn't matter if Joe is a cassnova with five women on the go back home, he will still feel ready to kill someone.
We are all aware that in consumerism, sex sells (and predominantly to male buyers). However, if you look at the precise methods of using sex to sell a product, the advertisers make you believe that EVERYONE ELSE is having more sex than you, and all you need to fix that is to buy the product. Infact, the most explicit use of this tactic can be currently seen in the Lynx Deodorant advertisements that are given the slogan Spray More, Get More. These is practically the same as teasing a dog with a bone to train it into becoming loyal, and the vulnerability of a person's raw instincts mean that this practice is very effective.
So I ask, as we head deeper into the 21st century where sex, celebrity, brand image, consumerism and self-improvement will remain or become ever more powerful, what will the effects be on an entire generation exposed to all these assaults? Or is this nothing new? Is it inescapable?
In essence, both the grandparent's and my own posts can be summed up by a three minute flash video seen here
-HM678
To be fair, it's not "Dark Ages puritanism" - it's more like not mixing work and personal life. There are a number of ways in which sex in space could make interaction between crew members very awkward, which would in turn make the whole crew less efficient, which could be dangerous and costly. Plus, can you imagine what would happen if whatever method of birth control they're using failed? Hopefully they'd be smart enough to get permenantly sterilized before trying something like that, but if not it could be a serious problem.
That said, I don't know how they'd enforce it either.
A cheap shot at George Bush is really funny from somebody who can't even spell "Kirk" correctly.
And by the way, chimpanzees are apes, not monkeys. I would expect an intellectual such as yourself -- and all the Slashdroids who modded you "+5 Funny" -- to know the difference.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
If that was true, we'd all be working in porn.
--Forest C. Adcock--
How about this? Why not just send 4 horny bisexuals (2 male, 2 female) who don't have any hangups about group sex?
Then NASA could just sell the video feed of their "fun room" to help recoup the costs on the mission!
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
No, you have this other way around (I might sound a bit "bad" (sorry, I'm not English speaker and proper word has escaped me), but: typical). It's not "not wanting" or "denying it", it's "not needing it to function properly".
And your last paragraph hits the spot (as in: what this is all about): you see, mission to Mars WON'T be just another job in which people are required to carry on on a professional attitude, it will be the most extraordinary and stressfull activity in which these people will be put in in their lives. If someone requires sex to releive her/him from stresses, etc. of life on Earth, using that people for the mission could mean havoc.
One that hath name thou can not otter
You act like you're suprised that astronauts would act like this. the majority of them are hotshot fighter pilots with giant egos and sex drives to match. These are ppl with a proven physical resilience to high G travel and capable of staying alert with the disorientation that comes with extended zero-g missions. Astronauts are always in contact with their mission planners on earth who guide them through each and every step.
People overestimate the intelligence of the astronaut. Their most important asset is their physical conditioning and preparation and not the grey stuff in their heads.
I'm happy nasa is thinking in advance about social dynamics in such long haul missions.
No space sex? Why the hell am I wasting my time at astronaut school, then?!
;-)
And engineering school is much better?