This NASA sex tape will not, I am sure, ever see the light of day (or the half light of darkened rooms, either). Seriously, there really is a NASA sex tape and no, it doesn’t involve an astronaut driving across the country in a daiper.

Way back when, NASA needed to find out whether sex was in fact possibly in zero G. So they asked a lady astronaut and a gentleman astronaut if they’d be willing to make the beast with two backs while up there. We don’t know how many they asked but they did get the volunteers they needed and thus they filmed it, making the NASA sex tape.

US and Russian astronauts have had sex in space for separate
research programmes on how human beings might survive years in orbit,
according to a book published yesterday.

Pierre Kohler, a
respected French scientific writer, says in The Final Mission: Mir, The
Human Adventure that the subject is taboo both at Nasa and at mission
control in Moscow, but that cosmic couplings have taken place.

"The
issue of sex in space is a serious one," he says. "The experiments
carried out so far relate to missions planned for married couples on
the future International Space Station, the successor to Mir.
Scientists need to know how far sexual relations are possible without
gravity."

He cites a confidential Nasa report on a space
shuttle mission in 1996. A project codenamed STS-XX was to explore
sexual positions possible in a weightless atmosphere.

Twenty
positions were tested by computer simulation to obtain the best 10, he
says. "Two guinea pigs then tested them in real zero-gravity
conditions. The results were videotaped but are considered so sensitive
that even Nasa was only given a censored version."

Only four
positions were found possible without "mechanical assistance". The
other six needed a special elastic belt and inflatable tunnel, like an
open-ended sleeping bag.

Mr Kohler says: "One of the principal
findings was that the classic so-called missionary position, which is
so easy on earth when gravity pushes one downwards, is simply not
possible."

The missionary position is not possible then, eh? Hmm. So I guess that the Southern Baptists aren’t going to make it off planet then?