According to NASA, no humans have ever had sex in space, but with the swift ascent of private space tourism, you can bet that humankind will soon join the 62-mile-high club.
This impending achievement, coupled with renewed efforts to populate Earth orbit, build a colony on the Moon, and travel to Mars, lay bare the urgent need for scientific research into all aspects of sex in space, a team of Canadian researchers from Concordia University and Laval University argue in a paper just published in the Journal of Sex Research.
The team, led by Simon Dubé, a Concordia University PhD candidate in psychology specializing in human sexuality, sextech, and erobotics, calls for space programs to seriously explore “space sexology.”
Dubé and his co-authors have already fleshed out a few potential areas for research. The first is designing systems and spaces that allow for eroticism to be safe, private, and hygienic. This effort may also include preliminary planning for delivering babies in space and treating any sex-related health issues.
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Ultimately, if properly researched and planned for, “intimacy and sexuality — like leisure — could help endure and normalize life in space by making it more enjoyable and less lonely,” the researchers say.
