preface
The pace of human exploration in space has never stopped. Within the scope that human beings can currently explore, only traces of life have appeared on the earth, and among the many species born on the earth, only human beings have produced wisdom, born civilization, and explored the world beyond the visible range of human eyes.
However, the rapid development of human science and technology has caused more and more damage to the global environment. Especially since the industrial revolution, the negative impact on the air, water, soil and other ecological environment has become more and more, greenhouse effect, acid rain, land desertification and other problems not only pose a threat to human survival, but also consume the life of the earth.
Therefore, studies have long shown that the earth will not always be suitable for human survival, not only because of the destruction of the earth by human beings, but also because in the future, the earth may undergo a series of dramatic changes, and even the sun may expand sharply until it devours the earth on which human beings depend.
Crises from all sides have forced humans to rush out of the atmosphere and continue to explore into space. But the universe is vast, our human solar system is only the tip of the iceberg of the vast universe, the distance in space is calculated in light years, which means that with our current technology, it will take hundreds of thousands of years to explore, even if it is the basis of human development - reproduction has become a major problem to overcome, so how do human beings carry out the necessary sex in space to reproduce?
The challenges posed by the space environment to humanity
The first thing to face in space is the vacuum environment. The vacuum environment is not only without air, but also requires the help of appliances to provide oxygen, but also another important problem to overcome, that is, weightlessness.
Some people may feel that the weightless environment is very fun, walking can "fly" to walk, everyone is floating, but when people are in a weightless environment, because the feet do not reach the ground, will naturally lose a sense of security, in the playground some projects will make people briefly experience the feeling of weightlessness for a few minutes, but in space may face the adult months or even a lifetime of feet without touching the life, these are the challenges brought to human beings by the space environment.
Life in space will also have a certain impact on our bodies. Studies have shown that the weightless environment in space is not conducive to maintaining human bone density, in other words, living in space is likely to cause osteoporosis and even bone thinning.
Scientists explain that this is because on Earth, due to the stimulation of gravity, our bone density will remain at the same level, but when humans are in a vacuum environment, they lose the continuous stimulation of gravity, and there will be bone loss, and the results of astronauts' bone testing also confirm this, they will lose about 1% of bone mass every month, which is equivalent to the amount of bone loss of an elderly person on Earth for a year, and because of this, they are also more likely to have fractures and other problems.
It's not just bone problems, vacuum environments can also cause muscle atrophy in humans. The weightless environment of space basically does not have any stimulating effect on the muscles, and human muscles need to contract in daily life and withstand pressure to exist, so walking in space by "floating" life makes the leg muscles almost lose their effect, only a dozen days of work, 1/5 of the body's muscles will gradually atrophy, and even after returning to the ground, the neck muscles even support the head is somewhat difficult.
When blood flows from bottom to top on Earth, it requires a strong beating of the heart to complete, but in space, affected by weightlessness, the heart does not need to beat very hard to complete the process of blood circulation, which over time will lead to the weakening of heart function and cause problems in the distribution of blood, so the probability of astronauts having heart problems in space is greatly increased.
In addition, another terrible phenomenon in space is radiation. The radiation present in the universe is very likely to cause changes in human genetic material, such as inversion of genetic information in some segments of chromosomes, and according to scientists' analysis, it may take 50 years of continuous radiation to reach the same level of radiation due to the damage caused by high-energy cosmic particles in this year. Even gene fragments can change, which is very detrimental to our human reproduction.
If the above factors are all objective influences, then only from the subjective aspect of the husband and wife, husband and wife life needs to meet certain conditions to be carried out.
Due to the influence of the vacuum environment, all substances have lost gravity and floated up, and blood is no exception, so astronauts often see facial congestion in the picture transmitted to the ground, which also faces a problem: it is difficult to ensure that men can maintain lower body congestion in a vacuum environment, and then complete married life and finally complete conception.
In a space mission of the US Space Agency in 1991, there was an example of husband and wife going to space together, and this is the only couple who went to space together. When they returned to the ground after completing the mission, the reporters rushed to interview the husband and wife: Did some "ulterior" things happen during the space flight? However, both said that nothing other than work has happened and cannot happen on the space station.
In fact, if you think about it, you can understand that the space station is very small, and there are other mission partners, which basically eliminates the possibility of two people being alone, and also needs to do real-time feedback with the ground, so monitoring equipment is also everywhere, and nothing excessive can happen between the two.
Another example from 1994 tested the possibility of the couple's words. An astronaut from Russia needs to carry out a mission of nearly 438 days, and Roscosmos also very "humanely" asked him if he needed some "little movies" taking into account some normal physiological needs, but the astronaut refused, and said that there was no such "worldly desire" at all.
Therefore, this brings a more realistic problem, the environment in space is almost impossible to even have the desire to live as a couple, let alone think about further conception problems. But now that the problem has been raised, scientists have begun to solve this problem through relevant experiments, but there has been no breakthrough for the time being.
Breeding experiments in space
As early as 1994, scientists carried out breeding experiments in space, and several scientists from Japan took several fish to space to observe experiments in order to verify whether organisms could mate in space.
Because fish is a type of in vitro fertilization, which also facilitates scientists to experiment and observe, the final results show that fish can reproduce and hatch normally in space, and their offspring are also very normal.
However, it is precisely because it is a fish that the results of this experiment are not very interesting for humans. Because humans are mammals and the mode of production is in vivo conception, these uncontrollable factors mean that it may be much more difficult for mammals to reproduce in space, so scientists began experiments on mammals.
The usual laboratory animals in the laboratory are mice, they are mammals, and this creature also has a characteristic, that is, it will seize all the time to reproduce, but after the mice arrived in space, the space environment made these laboratory mice also lose this "worldly desire", they not only did not mate, but also refused to have sex with each other.
In another space mouse breeding experiment a few years later, the pair of mice succeeded in conceiving, but a new situation appeared: not only did the rate of embryo development be much lower than on Earth, but also abnormal embryos and malformed embryos appeared, and the incidence was much higher than when they were on Earth.
Even mature embryos are born with great problems. Mice born in space not only have certain problems in sensing gravity, but also do not turn over on their own, these are problems that normal mice born on Earth do not have. Moreover, they also have different degrees of developmental delay and abnormal organ development problems with the offspring born of normal mice on Earth.
The above experiments jointly show that the weightless environment in space has a certain negative impact on the reproductive desire of mice and the development of embryos, which also reflects a problem, human beings in space may face the same or even more serious situation as mice.
Not only animals, but scientists have also conducted relevant breeding experiments on plants. One is to carry out related breeding experiments on beans, and the final experimental results are similar to mice, the reproduction rate of beans in space is slower, and the height of the plant is far from reaching the average on the ground, not only the flowering time is delayed, but also the ability to bear seeds has been negatively affected to varying degrees.
All of these experiments seemed to indicate that breeding in space had no positive effect, but another breeding experiment in 2014 broke that pattern.
The European Space Agency has done algae-related breeding experiments and found that the reproduction rate of algae in space conditions has increased significantly, and the number of offspring has also increased significantly.
Various experiments seem to indicate a result: different organisms are affected differently in space, and the degree of positive and negative impacts is difficult to predict, human beings are not bold enough to do relevant experiments with themselves, and even space agencies have banned couples from performing space missions together to varying degrees.
Can humans reproduce in space?
The reason for using mice and other creatures to reproduce in space is to test the behavior of human reproduction in space that may be carried out in the future.
But countless results have shown that when female mice enter space, the corpus luteum responsible for maintaining pregnancy will be reduced or even completely disappeared, which will lead to a result: even if the female mouse has been conceived, there is a high probability of miscarriage.
If you extrapolate according to this result, human women also have such a situation, which means that after human women enter space, even if they are pregnant, they have a high probability of miscarriage.
The situation of men is different from that of women, and it has been mentioned that after men enter space, the "worldly desire" will decline or even disappear, but men's sperm motility is completely the opposite.
It is said that the United States conducted a related experiment, their scientists took semen samples from 12 healthy men and brought them to the International Space Station, and simulated the signals of egg cells to stimulate sperm, which may be the cause of weightlessness of objects in space, and the results showed that sperm seemed to be more active than when they were on Earth, and they moved much faster.
However, as mentioned earlier, it is difficult to carry out husband and wife life in space, because of the loss of gravity, all human behavior will be restricted, various liquids will also be lost due to the loss of gravity and form balls in mid-air, and semen is also a kind of liquid, coupled with more active sperm in the weightless state, the direction of swimming is completely uncontrolled, which leads to the process of conception in the human body in space will become more difficult.
Not to mention the effects of human women after the reduction or even disappearance of the corpus luteum, just the long pregnancy process after conception will become more difficult.
Human women are pregnant in October, which is difficult on earth, not to mention the already dangerous delivery. What's more, the experiments on the human body are basically completely forbidden experiments, let alone experiments on fetuses, which is also an insurmountable gap for human reproduction activities in space.
If these basic problems cannot be solved, we will lose the basis for survival in space, let alone the continuation of human civilization in space.
Even if these problems are solved, there are still various rays of radiation in space, and it is difficult to guarantee that these radiation will not adversely affect pregnant women and fetuses, let alone guarantee that the children born will not have the same problems as the experimental mice, or that the offspring will suffer from some undiscovered genetic diseases.
summary
Human science and technology are constantly evolving, and civilization is also constantly improving.
For the exploration of space, human beings have never stopped the pace, although the current understanding of space is still very little, we also face a lot of problems, but the development of science and technology is changing with each passing day, although the current stage of human beings for how to reproduce in space has not yet a formed solution, but human intelligence is endless, the problems now are the driving force for future research and exploration.
Whether it is gravity or radiation, or the uncontrollable changes of the human body in the space environment, I believe that future development will give a perfect solution.