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From: smb@ulysses.att.com (Steven Bellovin)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: married astronauts to fly together?
Message-ID: <14264@ulysses.att.com>
Date: 5 Feb 91 02:25:32 GMT
References: <1991Feb1.223556.2313@infonode.ingr.com>
Sender: netnews@ulysses.att.com
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In article <1991Feb1.223556.2313@infonode.ingr.com>, drudetb@infonode.ingr.com (Ted B. Drude) writes:
> 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?

In the AP story I cited in my original posting on the subject, the NASA
spokescritter said just that, in so many words.

> 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.  

The issue, I suspect, would be one of titillation -- that everyone
would be snickering about it, joking about, even asking about it at
press conferences.  After all, look at the reactions on this
newsgroup.  We've all seen and laughed about the ``experiment'' on
``STS-75'' -- but the reason that piece was so funny is because it was
written in very clinical NASAspeak.  Imagine this report, or at least
the post-flight debriefing.  And then imagine the Freedom of
Information Act requests that will follow.

(Besides, NASA schedules crew times pretty tightly; I don't know if
there's enough room in the sleep budget for other activities.  One
can't have over-tired astronauts, of course, so should NASA issue a
rule prohibiting sex in space?)