• ch00f@lemmy.world
    74·
    1 day ago

    From the book “Packing for Mars” by Mary Roach:

    In a memoir, astronaut Michael Collins relates a story of a physician back in the Apollo era who recommended regular masturbation on long missions, lest astronauts develop prostate infections. The flight surgeon for Collins’s moon mission “decided to ignore that advice,” and ignoring seems to have been the basic approach to the human sex drive ever since. It’s the same way at the Russian space agency. Cosmonaut Alexandr Laveikin told me he too had heard that lengthy abstinence could cause prostate infections, but that the space agency pretends the issue doesn’t exist. “It’s up to yourself how you will deal with it. But everybody is doing it, everybody understands. It’s nothing. My friends ask me, ‘how are you making sex in space?’ I say, ‘By hand!’” As for the logistics: “There are possibilities. And sometimes it happens automatically while you sleep. It’s natural.” John Charles told me he’d heard about the link between prostate health and “self-stim” --at NASA, there’s an abbreviation for everything-- but never heard any formal discussion, pro or con, of orbital masturbation.

    • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
      21·
      1 day ago

      I’m amused by the use of “automatically” when I’ve always heard it in my terrestrial life as “involuntarily”. Changes the implication in a positive way, I’d say. Involuntary means you can’t stop it. Automatic means it’s supposed to happen.

    • EvilBit@lemmy.world
      4·
      1 day ago

      Always upvotes for Mary Roach. Everyone should read her breakout work, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.

        • EvilBit@lemmy.world
          2·
          22 hours ago

          Alas, that’s my least favorite of hers that I’ve read so far. Her angle is to all the questions you want answered, then get the answer. Spook, being about the unknowable, means the answers are a lot less fulfilling. Still a worthwhile read, just not her best in my opinion.

  • Gerudo@lemm.ee
    48·
    1 day ago

    I read somewhere that when the pair who were husband and wife went up, officially on record, no they didn’t do the deed.

    Other astronauts who have been asked about the couple answer it “well there wasn’t too much privacy, so it’d be difficult”. Not exactly a no.

    We all know they banged for science, but NASA probably just wants it kept hush hush for whatever reason.

  • zephorah@lemm.ee
    94·
    1 day ago

    This occurred a while back. I was standing at a nurses station, when the technician watching the heart monitors announced that a patients heart rate had jumped from 80s to 140s

    For those who don’t know, parameters are 50-100. 40s if you’re an athlete. And the heart rate is generally allowed to go to 129, in a hospital, if you have no symptoms.

    This individual jumped from 80s to 140s. This being a significant change, staff ran to the room to check the patients well-being and found this patients girlfriend riding him in the hospital bed.

    The question you should ask is how much privacy do they want?

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
    26·
    1 day ago

    Did you know that you can orgasm without the associated spike in heart rate? Takes some practice, but you can even separate ejaculation and orgasm, and still have both.

    It’s alllll about how much you’re willing to practice. It comes down to breath control combined with awareness of each stage of arousal and managing the two.