Potential problems of sex in space: What normal people are worrying about
Adapted from The Trenchant Observer, April 25, 2023.
See,
Joe Pinkstone (Science Correspondent),”Space sex could pose a risk to pregnancy; Astrobiologist believes sexual activity in space has gone under the radar, with little known about how microgravity impacts health,” The Telegraph, April 25, 2023 (6:35 p.m.);
There may in the future be a club even more exclusive than “The Mile High Club”. With the anticipated rise in space tourism, future paying astronauts may compete to join “The Hundred Miles High Club”.
Concerned scientists warn of the unknown risks of sex in space.
One thinks of Donald Rumsfeld’s famous taxonomy of unknowns, which he once explained as follows:
Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.
—Wikipedia
So, drawing on Rumsfeld’s analysis, we can say that we have three categories of sex-in-space risk:
1) The known known space-sex risks;
2) The known unknown space-sex risks: and
3) The unknown unknown space-sex risks.
One could write a whole novel, or a series of novels, about (3).
We should be grateful to Joe Pinkstone for pointing out that while we might be worried about Russia winning the Ukraine War or Trump and his authoritarian friends winning the presidency in 2024, there are other issues we ought to be worrying about, which normal people are worrying about, like the unknown unknown risks of sex in space.
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See also “Why I care about the war in Ukraine,” Trenchant Observations, June 26, 2023.