Opinion: Robots don’t need sex
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It isn’t just oxygen and food supply NASA needs to worry about when sending human beings on three-year missions to Mars. Turns out locking up healthy human being together in close quarters on such lengthy missions could complicate things a bit. Still, NASA would rather put off the sex question for now and tackle death in space. That doesn’t let NASA off the hook, however:
Sex is not mentioned in the document and has long been almost a taboo topic at NASA. Williams said the question of sex in space is not a matter of crew health but a behavioral issue that will have to be taken up by others at NASA. The agency will have to address the matter sooner or later, said Paul Root Wolpe, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania who has advised NASA since 2001. ‘There is a decision that is going to have to be made about mixed-sex crews, and there is going to be a lot of debate about it,’ he said.
Only ‘mixed-sex crews’? I mean, three years is a long time for even the most God-fearing heterosexuals of the same gender to ... whatever. They way I see it, if NASA wants to send people to Mars, either all guidelines and prohibitions on consensual sex have be scuttled, or we’ll have to be content with sending robots to do the job cheaper, longer and without such weighty complications. After all, no one grieves when a machine dies, and they sure don’t have the sex drive of astronauts.
At the very least, manned missions to Mars would make for some interesting reality TV.