You know, among the religious, there are still a few people out there who swear vows of chastity and go their whole life without sex. It's not really an irresistibly powerful human need like, say, oxygen. If there's a real good reason like SPACE I'm sure we could find a few qualified people who would be willing to abstain for the rest of their life; it's not a deal-breaker on the scales that the earliest space colonies will be recruiting from.
Granted, long-term colonization with a permanent population is obviously going to need some (and it will probably be small-town awkward for a while, and having your family life be everyone's business because of population and resource planning may be an interesting step backwards for today's liberated culture) but we can worry about that after we have nonzero population on Mars.
Oxygen is a rather high bar to compare against; by that standard you can do without food and water too.
You may indeed be able to find a dozen people that claim to be willing to abstain from sex for the rest of their lives. You might even find a dozen fervent believers whose religions are sufficiently compatible that they don't kill each other before the end of the mission. But if you put them in a box for the rest of their lives, I would not bet that these vows of chastity will hold. And what then? Punishment? Voted off the space station for having sex? This sounds like a recipe for repression on a level that would impress the Saudis.
The Catholic Church can't even reliably enforce chastity among its professional clergy. I don't think this issue can be waved away.
> The Catholic Church can't even reliably enforce chastity among its professional clergy
Many of the Catholic Church's problems stem from the fact that members of the clergy are in positions of authority and trust which can be abused to gain access to small children, one key reason that these positions were abused in a way that would never happen to, say, a company full of actuaries. A Mars mission wouldn't have this problem. It also has much smaller staffing needs, at least for the time being.
I've been downvoted twice for the parent comment? I'm sorry, did I get something wrong? Do the Catholic church's woes actually stem wholly from the indisputable fact that they're EVIL, and the fact that they have children/teens which may interest pedophiles/pederasts is wholly unrelated?
Screw this. I take back my earlier remark because I think I've just uncovered the real reason that sex will be a major problem on a Mars mission: it'll be run by a government bureaucracy in a society which cannot talk about them rationally on either side of the topic. It'll be a culture-war thing and the Right will demand vows of eternal chastity not just for the crew but for the rocket technicians as well, while the Left will demand strict polyamorous relationships for all astronauts just to spite the Christians.
You missed the point. How about: I'll go without food or water for an hour and you go without breathing for an hour. Human needs need not rise to the standard of oxygen to be significant. Especially when you're talking about lifespans.
Sex is not an (individual) human need. Ever. Regardless of the length of time you arbitrarily decide on. There are people who have died from suffocation, dehydration, and starvation. They are relatively common. Dying due to sexual abstinence, never heard of even a single case.
That is my point / argument. You may disagree, but I'm not gonna listen much unless provide some evidence.
Agreed. This is definitely not as big a problem as some people make it out to be. I mean, imagine this being posted to Ask HN tomorrow:
"Hello, this is the director of NASA. We need two programmers for an upcoming Mars mission. No remote options, sorry, you must actually go to Mars. For reasons, you must be castrated before the mission, among many other preparations. There is a 1/100 chance of death,and a 4/100 chance of return to Earth without landing on Mars. The remaining 95/100 scenarios involve being among the first humans to establish a beachhead for the species on another planet. Please email your résumé to careers@nasa.gov. 20 years of jQuery preferred."
Do you think they would have any trouble filling that spot?
> Do you think they would have any trouble filling that spot?
Outside of joke candidates? Yes, probably.
I think people here tend to underestimate not only people's willingness to live (see the Challenger accident and the resulting scandal), but also their the importance of fulfilling their basic needs.
Beside, castration doesn't make you uninterested in sex as it's not a purely hormonal driven desire.
This is a perfect example of how screwed up some people's view of sex is. We are talking about PERMINENTLY AND SEVERELY MUTILATING SOMEBODY just so we can dodge having to deal with a basic, healthy aspect of humanity.
I agree that many people have an inappropriate attitude towards sex. And I am not saying that castration is even a solution in the first place - as the other commenter pointed out, that wouldn't really fix the psychological issues that we're trying to solve. Keeping one person or several people sane and agreeable in a tightly confined chamber for months or years is a hard problem, and not just because of the biological life support systems.
But I was proposing this drastic action as an example of the drastic solutions and risks we could take for these missions. I was not proposing it just to deal with the "problem of sex", I am saying that we can consider crazy actions so we can FREAKING COLONIZE ANOTHER PLANET.
And yes, I see the irony in starting a colonization operation with castrated astronauts. Obviously, it would be a while before the colony was self-supporting for air, water, and food, much less self-populating.
An insult? Is something in your sense of self or your psyche built around the proposition that sexual self-control is substantially impossible anywhere in the human population, such that any assertion contradicting it is insulting? Because that doesn't seem a very healthy way to relate to an idea. In fact, I'd say that if you are unable to entertain an opinion contrary to your own, that's the literal definition of bigotry, whether the opinion is valid or otherwise, and it is difficult or impossible to conduct rational discourse amidst such closed-mindedness.
You seem to be inferring that some people are superior than other people because of their religion.
As you do not spell it out directly, then I consider that it is bordering an insult and not a direct insult. I hope this answers to your question.
> Is something in your sense of self or your psyche built around the
> proposition that sexual self-control is substantially impossible
> anywhere in the human population, such that any assertion
> contradicting it is insulting?
I am actually not arguing about (see above) that certain individuals can not apply limited control over their bodies.
What I am arguing is that it is common (and natural (1)) among humans to form sexual relationships and it would be also natural to discuss scientific issues (think about things floating around in microgravity for an example or conflict psychology, or the list would go on) and policies related to this aspect of human behaviour.
While you seem to suggest that we do not discuss about the issue and should expect celibacy from every involved individual without any further discussion.
This is not a scientific approach.
(1) if you think that it is not common and not natural, then try to explain to yourself why there are religious rules (policies) about it.
> In fact, I'd say that if you are unable to entertain an opinion
> contrary to your own, that's the literal definition of bigotry,
> whether the opinion is valid or otherwise, and it is difficult or
> impossible to conduct rational discourse amidst such closed-mindedness.
I hope that the above also answered to this question.
Granted, long-term colonization with a permanent population is obviously going to need some (and it will probably be small-town awkward for a while, and having your family life be everyone's business because of population and resource planning may be an interesting step backwards for today's liberated culture) but we can worry about that after we have nonzero population on Mars.