Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: married astronauts to fly together?
Message-ID: <1991Feb4.235309.18013@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1991Feb1.223556.2313@infonode.ingr.com>
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 1991 23:53:09 GMT

In article <1991Feb1.223556.2313@infonode.ingr.com> drudetb@infonode.ingr.com (Ted B. Drude) writes:
>>A much more likely source of trouble than the psychiatrists is management
>>worried about the reaction from the religious Right.  It is not an accident
>>that none of the married couples has ever flown together.
>
>Oh really? That means NASA has deliberately kept married astronauts from
>being on the same flight before,  right?  Do you have any objective
>source for this or are you just blowing some weird biased smoke out of
>your own brain?

NASA won't discuss the subject in public at all.  However, it is a fact
that no married couple has ever flown together, and sources I semi-trust
tell me that it is deliberate.  I consider this highly plausible, because
NASA has a long history of being hyper-sensitive to the slightest chance
of bad public relations.  (For example, plans to include wine with some
of the meals on Skylab were scuttled after protests from the WCTU.)

>But name ONE member of the "Religious Right" (or any other
>religious ""Direction" for that matter) that would  object to a MARRIED
>couple being together,  whether on  earth or in orbit,  in either a
>conjugal or non-conjugal sense.  

Easy:  the folks who think that sex for purposes other than reproduction
is sinful.  (Maybe *you'd* be willing to try to convince them that sex
in space was entirely for reproductive purposes, but I wouldn't be.)
-- 
"Maybe we should tell the truth?"      | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
"Surely we aren't that desperate yet." |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry