Space is the place
Out of context: Reply #82
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- hans_glib5
Women will colonise Venus, men will never get to Mars. That is, scientists said yesterday, the logical conclusion of research showing that frozen sperm can survive the weightlessness of space.
They argued that the study, which involved repeatedly exposing semen to zero gravity and then checking for signs of degradation, showed there was no need to waste rocket fuel on men when colonising the cosmos. Instead humanity’s future, it seems, is an interplanetary matriarchy.
Science fiction writers, and even Nasa itself, have long mooted the idea of taking women-only crews on extended space missions. In 2017 Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut, said that Nasa had gone so far as to produce a paper arguing that single-sex crews were best for cohesion and that women were preferable because they were more likely to co-operate.
The real advantage, however, comes when they reach their destination, especially if it is in a distant solar system. Then, the chief limit on the speed at which a space colony could expand is not men but women.
While a man can reproduce essentially indefinitely, a woman can make a baby only every nine months. This means that it makes sense to have more women than men. It makes even more sense, from both a logistics and genetics perspective, to replace the men entirely and simply take a selection of sperm.
Montserrat Boada, from the Dexeus women’s health centre in Barcelona, said that this was feasible. “It’s not unreasonable to start thinking about the possibility of reproduction beyond the Earth,” she said.
She and her colleagues, who presented their study at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Vienna, sent frozen sperm samples on eight parabolic flights, in which a plane simulates zero gravity by repeatedly flying in a steep arc. When compared with samples left on the runway, they found there was no significant difference in motility or quality. They said that the work “opens the possibility of safely transporting male gametes to space and . . . creating a human sperm bank outside Earth”.
Allan Pacey, a professor of andrology at the University of Sheffield, said that there was nothing wrong in principle with a future in which males were restricted to providing semen samples to service intrepid all-female voyages.
“If we ever get to the stage of wanting to populate other planets, then I think the idea of sending sperm into space along with female astronauts is a great idea,” he said.
However, he wanted more evidence than that of the parabolic flights before entrusting a distant colony’s genetic future to an ice cube of sperm.
“I can image a similar level of weightlessness might already be being experienced by men spending an evening on the rides at the Blackpool pleasure beach,” he said. “If we really want to prove that sperm function can survive in space then we really need to put a sperm bank on the International Space Station and keep some sperm up there for a few years.”
- article in today's paperhans_glib
- My mom held a manager position in a railroad company, and was responsible for 12 other women in an all-women-team. She is the most anti-feminist person alivedrgs
- She won't even read books written by female authors. NASA should have a talk with my momdrgs
- men have always been disposable.inteliboy
- i lived with 5 women. that was not a cohesive and cooperative year.Gnash
- my mother was a top construction engineer in our city, everywhere she went people listened because of her power and because she was a woman...pr2
- ...and she's the first one that will tell you that construction engineering isn't for women because... you can't wear high heels.pr2
- Not any more.....https://cha...Morning_star
- https://charnwoodfoo…Morning_star
- Radiation from space will wreak havok on the spermcannonball1978
- True dat.deadsperm
- @cannonball, and the eggsmonospaced
- yeah but who will kill the space spiders and open jars? ;)monospaced
- Also, it's not a logical conclusion because fathers are needed, and mission value isn't determined by portability of reproductive systems.cannonball1978
- It's fine, we'll get small-scale fusion powering radiation-negating magnetic fields in water-rich media in less time it takes than for this to become relevantNairn
- I think it's a great thought exercise.
Our descendents might be somewhat gender-neutral females, able to conceive, but imbued with male characteristicsNairn - The future is lesbians, people.Nairn
- OMG. This is what the movie version of Contact, starring Jodie Foster, was trying to tell us!Nairn
- https://ih0.redbubbl…Nairn
- Bhawahaha... yeah right, it gets to minus 195 degrees F last night on mars.... those dildos aren't going nice to hug at night ladies...shapesalad