Eros in Orbit

Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting. It was bad enough when they were motionless, but when they started to move, and sympathetic vibrations set in, it was more than any warm-blooded male should be asked to take. He was quite sure that at least one serious space accident had been caused by acute crew distraction, after the transit of an unholstered lady officer through the control cabin. . . . Whenever the well-built surgeon oscillated into the commander's cabin, he felt a fleeting echo of the old passion. She knew that he felt it, and both were happy. —Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama

The Good, Gray New York Times has finally discovered the topic of sex in space, 92 years too late. William Broad's recent article ("Recipe for Love: A Boy, a Girl, a Spacecraft") should have paid respectful tribute to George Griffith's 1901 classic, A Honeymoon in Space. I must confess that I've never seen a copy, but as Queen Victoria was still on the throne when it appeared, it's safe to assume that Griffith left everything to the reader's imagination. Certainly, he would not have pointed out the possibilities opened up by weightlessness. (Don't be so impatient, we'll come to those later.)

My own effort along those lines, excerpted above, caused sufficient stir that at least one Oregon school board was thrown into turmoil:

Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama has caused a battle within the Springfield, Oregon, school board over its alleged sexual suggestiveness. After a heated discussion, the board approved the book by a three-to-two vote. District administrators said high school English and literature teachers could request use of the book in their classes, but it would not be required reading in all classes.

Tempted though I am to start a rush to the nearest bookstore, honesty compels me to admit that the rest of my Rendezvous is, by the standards of the Nineties, about as sexually suggestive as Little Women.

What has belatedly excited the interest of the Times, and a good many other people, is NASA's first husband-and-wife shuttle team. However, it is unlikely that embarrassing situations will arise in the shuttle because (a) flights are currently limited to about two weeks in orbit, (b) privacy is virtually impossible and (c) everyone is very, very busy.

But matters will be quite different on long-duration missions and, of course, when permanent bases are established on the moon, Mars and other celestial bodies. As long ago as 1955, years before the general public took space travel seriously, the distinguished astronomer Robert S. Richardson told the readers of The Saturday Review:

If space travel and colonization of the planets eventually become possible on a fairly large scale, it seems probable that we may be forced into first tolerating and finally accepting openly an attitude toward sex that is taboo in our present social framework. . . . To put it bluntly, may it not be necessary for the success of the project to send some nice girls to Mars at regular intervals to relieve tensions and promote morale?

One unexpected response to Richardson's tongue-in-cheek proposal was a short story by C. S. Lewis, Ministering Angels, in which he asked what kind of girl would accept such an assignment. The two visitors he envisions arrive at the small Mars Base but are not exactly what the doctor ordered:

Some of those present had doubted the sex of this creature. Its hair was very short, its nose very long, its mouth very prim, its chin sharp, and its manner authoritative. The voice revealed it as, scientifically" speaking, a woman. But no one had any doubt about the sex of her nearest neighbor, the fat person. . . . [She] was infinitely female and perhaps in her 70s. Her hair had been not very successfully dyed to a color not unlike that of mustard. . . . Powder (scented strongly enough to throw a train off the rails) lay like snowdrifts in the complex valleys of her creased, many-chinned face.

You will not be surprised to know that the intended but appalled bene-factories hijack the mercy ship and escape back to earth, leaving the ministering angels stranded on Mars.

Ministering Angels was, of course, a joke, though it raised some serious issues. Lewis himself disapproved of space flight as an attempt to evade what he called "God's quarantine regulations." "I'm sure," he once told me, "that you interplanetarians are very wicked people." Then he added with a grin, "But wouldn't life be dull if everyone were good?"

Two of the people most involved in the first moon landing have recently expressed their views on extraterrestrial wickedness. Dr. Tom Paine, NASA administrator during the first seven Apollo missions, ends an essay, "The Next 25 Years in Space," with this challenge to his successors: "NASA needs to organize a small high-level systems group ... to lay out the programs, budgets and milestones that will support the first Martian baby in 2015."

That is indeed optimistic. The general view is that we'll be lucky to make the first Mars landing by 2015, let alone establish prenatal facilities there. And a conception en route would be a thoroughly irresponsible act.

But what about other sexual activity on the months-long voyage? Mike Collins, command module pilot of the Apollo 11 mission, considers the problem in his skillful melding of fact and fiction, Mission to Mars. "Husband-and-wife teams seem a good solution ... but it may be extraordinarily difficult to cover all disciplines and skills with married couples. Maybe a marriage certificate is an unnecessary frill."

He then opens a can of worms: "Those picking a Mars crew will be faced with some highly qualified homosexual candidates. I would not pick them. I think enough interpersonal problems will develop among a totally heterosexual crew, and introducing an element of homosexuality could only serve to make matters worse."

Some of my gay friends have expressed indignation at this, even calling Collins a bigot. This is unfair, and I hasten to come to his defense. Although one hopes that by the time there really is a Mars mission such barbaric prejudices will have vanished, Collins' statement merely acknowledges things as they are today. Space travel involves so many unavoidable hazards that any factor that reduces the risk of failure must be carefully considered. Many of them are subtle and psychological: I would hate to spend six months cooped up in a small cabin with a rabid baseball (or cricket!) fan, a born-again anything, a knuckle-cracker or terminal crossword addict, even though I might enjoy their company in small doses. And is it really pure coincidence that the only near-disastrous Apollo mission was number 13? You can't be too careful.

The science fiction writers, of course, have explored all possible varieties of sex in space and on alien planets. During the pulp era (from, say, 1930 to 1955), such magazines as Startling Stories lured their almost exclusively male readers with garish covers, usually featuring young ladies in brass bras being menaced by horrid things. What said things intended to do with them was left to the imagination, because the illustrations had no connection with the contents of the magazine.

Today's writers have no need to worry about the taboos of the past. Many of them have taken full advantage of their new freedom by serious and thoughtful treatment of sexuality in space and, specifically, along the orbit to Mars. Science fiction grand master Jack Williamson recently published Beachhead (at the age of 83!), which has some very steamy passages; ditto Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars.

In fact, everyone seems to be going to Mars, including NASA. If all goes well (where have I heard that phrase before?), the Mars Observer space probe will carry out a long-duration survey of the planet. The results it obtains may well set the time scale for establishing mankind's first home beyond earth.

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Many years ago a popular English comedian, George Formby, well-known for his risqué material, had a favorite song that culminated in the line: "I went to France, to see what it's like there, but it's no different anywhere."

That may no longer be true: By general consent, if not yet by actual experimentation, "it" will be different in space. The Times quotes a former NASA (concluded on page 238)Eros in Orbit(continued from page 106) flight surgeon (those currently on the payroll are conspicuously silent on the subject) as saying that physical intimacy in the weightlessness of space would probably be enjoyable, perhaps more so than on earth. "You're going to have lots of freedom of movement," she noted. Hear, hear! And at the least, you'll be able to say goodbye to the old problem of waking up with the circulation in one arm cut off by the inert weight of a sleeping partner.

Space tourism will be getting off (sorry about that) the ground just in time to celebrate the centennial of Griffith's Honeymoon in Space. When 2001's Orbiter Hilton is finally built—my guess is around 2015, but then I'm a well-known conservative—many of its customers will be newly married couples, as well as lots of unmarried ones. They will be able to choose suites with any gravity they like, from zero at the center of the slowly rotating wheel to perhaps half a g at the rim. It may well turn out that after the novelty has worn off, complete weightlessness will not prove as satisfactory, for rather obvious reasons, as fractional gravity. Doubtless, the time will come when there will be endless debates between Martians (one-third g) and Lunarians (one-sixth g) over the erotic superiority of their respective habitats.

Meanwhile, a great deal of preliminary research can be done right here on earth, and I am happy to point the way. The parallel between scuba diving and living in space is now common knowledge. One day the bumper sticker Divers do it Deeper will be matched by Astros do it Higher.

My personal interest in diving derived entirely from my desire to experience weightlessness in my own lifetime (though, so far as I recall, I did not have this particular application in mind). From 1950 on, I took every opportunity to infect my fellow space cadets with this enthusiasm—in at least one case with notable consequences.

During a visit to Washington in March 1954, I spent a weekend with my two closest American friends, Pip and Fred Durant. The other houseguest was Dr. Wernher von Braun, and before the weekend was over, I had, in his own words, "introduced me to the sport that has become my favorite—skin diving."

I did not know it at the time (though I suspected what was afoot), but Fred and Wernher were organizing a meeting of the engineers and scientists involved in Project Orbiter, a secret Army-Navy effort to launch a satellite. After various tips and downs—mostly downs, including the unlucky Vanguard—this was to lead to the successful launch of Explorer I, the first U.S. satellite.

Immediately after he had dealt with the Project Orbiter business, Wernher rushed off to buy his first Aqualung and, much more important, initiated construction of the enormous tank at Hunts-ville, Alabama, a vital astronaut training device for almost 30 years. In 1973 it saved U.S. taxpayers some $2.5 billion, when a team advised by Pete Conrad developed the tools and procedures that salvaged the crippled Skylab space station and turned disaster into triumph.

So the basic equipment is readily available to solve what Ben Bova, president emeritus of the National Space Society, has called "some very interesting problems in rendezvous and docking." If it accepts this challenge, NASA could certainly get itself into the public eye again and divert some of the TV coverage from gamy Supreme Court hearings and sordid court cases.

Bova, whose recent novel Mars is a worthy addition to those I've already mentioned, goes on to add, "Essentially, you're turning sex into a three-dimensional experience." The absence of gravity would certainly make some of the more acrobatic performances outlined in the Kama Sutra less likely to invoke the urgent services of a chiropractor, and there are some more startling possibilities. Consider, for example, the notorious daisy chain—hitherto, merely two-dimensional. In zero gravity, all the regular solids and many highly irregular ones could be constructed. And that's just the beginning. Look at those extraordinary carbon compounds, shaped like geodesic domes, that the organic chemists have discovered. Buckminster-fullerene, anyone?

I think I'd better stop here, before that school board starts gunning for me again. So let us end on a more serious, not to say dignified, note.

Life began in the weightless environment of the ocean, and we all spend the first eight months of our existence in the ocean of the womb. Here on land, crushed and often killed by gravity, we are refugees in transit camp who have lost the freedom of the sea and not yet— except for a lucky few, and for brief periods—attained the freedom of space.

Many years ago I wrote a short story called Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Orbiting in which I said that we would not really have conquered space until the first baby was born on the moon. Let's change that locale to Mars and try, despite all the odds, to meet that 2015 target.

"The absence of gravity would make the 'Kama Sutra less likely to invoke the services of a chiropractor."