Looking at all the tech developments by corporations such as NASA, Tesla’s Space X, and enjoining of China in the race to study and eventually colonize the outer space. I strongly believe man has moved from fantasizing about Mars colonization from all the science fiction books and movies to actual planning on how and when to do it. It is only a matter of time from here onwards.
Sex on Mars?
So let us travel forward in time and assume man (and woman) have actually landed on planet Mars. [We are traveling theoretically here!] Days go by, weeks, and perhaps some months. What will they be doing on the red planet? Sending reports back to the base station on the International Space Station (ISS) or to the proposed China Space Station (CSS)?
I think not, the nights will come, and with darkness, ideas will come up. The first man and woman to land on Mars will probably stop to take a breather from all their report work and explore their surrounding; read explore each other.
Now, assuming the man and woman decide to get too cordial with each other. Can they successfully have sex on Mars? That might seem like a funny question on the surface until you think of the fact that the gravity on Mars is one-third that of Earth.
The human body was designed to work on Earth, and that means all our muscles movements and body system take into account the Earth’s gravity and its intensity. On Mars, the man’s and woman’s bodies will be experiencing less gravitational pull.
It has been observed, from the extended mission into space, less gravity causes loss of blood pressure. Man needs optimal blood pressure to engage in sexual intercourse; otherwise, he won’t be able to ‘pitch a tent.’
When the two go horizontal, perhaps there is some contribution gravity has to the traveling of sperms up the birth canal to where the ovum are, though I could be wrong here; this is just layman talk. However, assuming man could overcome the low blood pressure, and the spermatozoa find their way to the ovum.
It has been documented (again from the prolonged space missions) that low gravity leads to human biological makeup problems, including deteriorating vision and weakened the immune system. For a woman to carry a pregnancy to full term, her immune system plays a critical role, and the weakened immune system in Mars could lead to miscarriage due to infections.
By the way, lower gravity also reduces man’s sperm count. So that is another challenge they will have to overcome; if at all! There is also the fact that when survival is on the line, humans resort to using our primal instinct. The man and woman will be pairing up based on each other’s ability to survive on the new planet.
So it will lead to a scenario where only men who seem not to be badly affected by the new ‘reddish’ environment will find a mate, and only with women who also appear not affected. Those that can’t survive well on the red planet will die out. The kids born out of the pairing of the men and women who survived will be better adapted for the Mars environment.
If humans could travel to Mars, it might also mean they may be able to make the trip back to Earth. Now, these children born and bred in Mars, how will they fair when they make the trip back to Earth? Will they be the same species as the humans back at home (planet Earth)?
Well, researchers from the United States, Brazil, and Poland have attempted to answer these questions in a new journal published in Futures. You can read the journal at this link.
