The “weird” advice from astrophysicist and pop scientist Neil DeGrasse Tyson for anyone who will join space missions and find the need to have sex during the long journey is to bring a lot of leather belts. No, it does not mean that sado-masochism is tolerated in space odysseys.

Rather, the belts are needed to keep two people together because of weightlessness in space, Tyson explains to a fan who asked on National Geographic Channel’s Star Talk on how astronauts have sex.

Physical intimacy in space, he says, is an opportunity to explain Newton’s Law of motion. Astronauts float in space, and if they move toward another astronaut, they “sort of bounce off.” The implication of that is “an object in motion will stay in motion unless an external force is applied to it,” quotes Daily Beast.

Because of the lack of friction, “If you want to get together and stay together, you need something to keep you together during all the normal body movements that would characterize having sex in space,” Tyson tells the fan.

However, Fox points out that under the code of conduct of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), astronauts must keep a relationship of trust and professional standards.

But if future space missions with longer travel period, such as Mars as their destination and with couples as passengers, Tyson’s advice to bring belts might be useful for those who need to meet their biological needs.

The Journal of Cosmology, in a 2011 research, however, warned that pregnancy while in deep space could be risky because of bombardment by high-energy particles of the space craft would likely sterilize any female foetus. This theory could mean problems of reproduction of red planet colonizers once the ones chosen lands in Mars.

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