For years NASA has denied that any sexual interactions have taken place on shuttle missions or on the International Space Station, and Russia has said the same about their station. Recently, though, a supposed NASA manual providing detailed instructions for astronauts on how to mate in zero gravity conditions was put up for bid on the auction website eBay. The eBay listing explained the seller acquired the document at the estate sale of a recently deceased NASA executive but his attempts to get NASA to authenticate the document had failed. The National Space Agency had refused to review the manual or comment on it one way or another.
On request the seller provided a few excerpts from the interior of the manual (only the front cover had been displayed on eBay) and sadly, the purported NASA manual is a hoax, pieced together from Michael O’Donoghue’s classic National Lampoon article “The NASA Sutra” (May 1971, Vol. 1, No. 14) and the recent book Sex In Space by Laura S. Woodmansee ( (Collector’s Guide Publishing, August, 2006). Informed of this, the seller restarted the auction with the new information included, but does not expect the sale price to be as high as he had hoped.
Editor’s Note: the photographs from “Sex in Space” that were appropriated for the fraudulent “manual” consist of “Barbie” and “Ken” type dolls posed in intimate positions uniquely suited for zero gravity. Why in one photo the pair is joined by a plastic dolphin is unclear.
Mon, May 12, 2008
National