Do astronauts carry on, um, "personal relationships" in outer space? "We don't have them and we won't," STS-131 shuttle commander Alan Poindexter is quoted as saying in today's Telegraph. Poindexter's statement, made during a Tokyo visit, simply reiterates the no-talking-about-sex-in-space stance often heard from NASA. On Earth, it's a different story, of course: Astronauts get married to each other (such as current space station resident Shannon Walker and Mir veteran Andrew Thomas). They even have affairs (as astronauts Lisa Nowak and Bill Oefelein famously did). Oefelein, by the way, is still slated to marry Colleen Shipman, the third member of that astronaut love triangle, in August.


Surely they've had a quickie up there to be the first people EVER to do it up there. I don't believe for a second that it's never been done.
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's Jason Kring is quoted as saying it's unrealistic to expect astronauts to "have no thoughts" of sex during a three-year mission to Mars. By that time, I'm betting there will be an established routine for such issues. I wonder how the Mars 500 mission is handling this?
I read somewhere (possibly wrong) that it's impossible for a man to get an erection in weightless conditions, thus rendering intercourse impossible. It would be like trying to stick a marshmellow in an ATM machine.