6 Reasons Why Mass Space Travel Would Completely Suck

In the 1960s, one of the many surprising issues NASA faced during the space race was none other than the humble fart. Astronauts blow raspberries just like anyone else, which can be a bit of a problem because the methane in farts is just as flammable in space as it is on earth. Although "lighting your own farts in space" sounds like the winning entry in a 12-year-old's "coolest ways to die" list, NASA didn't feel like decimating countless millions' worth of equipment because Steve the Idiot Astronaut is big on leftover chili.

Pixabay Public Domain
"Fuck you, Steve."

Part of the issue can be solved with proper diet, but there's always a few silent-but-deadlies sneaking under the radar, and they don't really go anywhere in zero-G conditions, because there's no convection. They just stay there, air bubbles of turd-gas hovering about like space mines. It's not such a huge problem when there's only a handful of professionals on a carefully restricted diet around, but when we start mass space travel ... well, let's just say that the space equivalent of the average person's Cheetos-and-burgers diet isn't going to bode well for the general odor of the place, let alone fire safety, when you multiply it by thousands. That's your future: Hordes upon hordes of people spewing anal gases from their terrifying cavities until the air turns brown. The inevitable purging fire will seem like sweet relief.

Unless there's proper ventilation, of course. Air fans are already a huge thing in space travel, because unless we have a fan running on our face when we sleep in zero-G conditions, the carbon dioxide we breathe out will just hang around, engulf our head and suffocate us. Of course, we'll obviously need to upscale our space ventilation systems quite a bit to accommodate the horror of our ass revolts, which will probably create inconveniently large exhaust ports that will eventually enable young pilots from Tatooine to destroy our fully operational space station. Yes, I just said Luke probably flew his mission to destroy the Death Star against a giant gust of Imperial butt wind.

Can you have any of it in space? Ha, no. This is what your new space living quarters will look like:

Pics About Space
The dude comes with the room, and will stare at you like that 24/7.

That's as attractive as a giant clump of taint hair pulled from the shower drain. There are freaking prisons that give you better premises. In some countries, you can even bring your Final Fantasy figurines with you, provided you leave out the ones you can use to shank a dude.

Play-Asia
So, basically, everything but this plush Vivi.

So, what's going to happen to our precious trinkets and furniture and video games? Hopefully, not a goddamned thing, because we're already trying to figure out ways to build space habitats. See, in the hopefully not-too-distant dreams of space scientists, our deep space living quarters will be less like that fucking broom closet above, and a whole lot more like the Bernal sphere :

Wikipedia
Ooh.

Or the Stanford torus:

Wikipedia
Ooooooohhhh.

Or this glorious bullshit right here:

Wikipedia
Agagfa.

That is the current endgame for mass space exploration: You don't need to lose any of your shit, because you'll live in a fucking space McMansion amidst fields of corn or grass or whatever the hell we'll eventually be able to engineer to grow in space. These aren't just pipe dreams of sci-fi authors, either -- all of the above models have been proposed by NASA, who are currently balls-deep in the theoretical deep space habitation game.

They'll probably need a pretty significant budget increase to actually build any of that, though. To help pay for them, I will sell all of the rare Final Fantasy figures from earlier, except for the ones that can be turned into shanks. Space farters aren't getting the best of me.

One of the first things humanity will try to get rolling once we start mass traveling in space will almost certainly be artificial gravity. That would enable us to sit, stand and, yes, screw just like we did on earth. However, it's a pants-shittingly difficult concept to pull off, so don't expect it anytime soon. Besides, once you leave the confines of Earth, why would you want to embark on your regular, awkward gravity-based missionary, where the only sci-fi element in your sex life is that roleplay you do on your birthday where you're Jabba the Hutt and she's the trash compactor. You're in space, people. Get space fuckin'.

Sex in zero gravity is the name of the game here, and therein lies the problem. You're not going to want to fly completely nude, because even the best of zero-G boning sessions is not going to be worth the glare of the space station commander when you bumblingly try to explain to him how that gallon of your dong sweat ended up in the machinery. You're going to want some protective gear between your equipment and the spaceship's, preferably something that also keeps you strapped to your partner so you won't embarrassingly float away from each other mid-thrust. If only someone would come up with an invention that meets all these needs ...

... wait, they already have? How about that. Meet the 2suit:

They're still working on the lace and frills.

OK, it's basically a set of flight suits with front flaps that can be velcroed into each other, so technically you're not so much indulging in sweet, weightless boning as much as you're awkwardly gyrating in a double Snuggie. On the other hand, it was invented by the lady who played the Queen in Beastmaster. Tell me you don't want to add a "boning in a weird gimp suit designed by the lady from Beastmaster" liner note to your sexual resume.

If you're not into sweaty and awkward "let's see if we can fit in the same sleeping bag" type boning, there are always other methods, aptly described in this video:

If you didn't watch the video, the solution is bondage: A few carefully placed elastic restraints will enable the couplin' couple to remain as attached to each other as the situation requires. Yes, space is into BDSM, and will make damn sure that everyone who tries to fuck within its reach will be, too.

Of course, the video raises more pressing issues than mere kink. Mankind simply wasn't built for space shagging. Our cardiovascular system distributes most of the blood to the upper body in zero gravity, which presents a problem because blood flow in the genital parts is pretty much how sexual arousal works. Also, men's testosterone levels tend to decrease in space, which highly contributes to the floppiness and, eventually, the it's-not-usually-like-this-I-swear-ness. Still, I can't say I'm too worried about mere biological issues, if only because the porn industry has already turned its inquiring gaze toward zero-G sex. Since porn's reliably at the forefront of pretty much every new technology, we can probably expect Space Viagra to hit the shelves by 2019.

No one likes that shit. What's worse, in space you pretty much have to spend two hours a day in contraptions like that one because otherwise your muscles atrophy like no one's business. How can we make that tolerable? No, tolerable won't do, actually. We need to make it awesome.

Luckily, science is on it. The default zero-G conditions in space enable athletic maneuvers that make the best parkour runners hang their heads in impotent shame, and bored-out-of-their-skulls astronauts have already started using/abusing this fact, developing awesome weightless workout programs from simple tasks like filling their water bags. Instead of merely filling them and stocking them, they toss them around like medicine balls, then grab them as they float by and let their momentum take them on a joyride. ISS Expedition 16 arranged racing competitions where team members would rush through the station's modules like a bunch of weightless Spider-Men. There have already been weightless basketball and Frisbee games, and they're apparently quite badass. Although you have to completely relearn the way you throw thanks to the absence of gravity, it seems like a small price to pay for being able to triple-spin-dunk your opponents like you're living in a game of NBA Jam. This could be you, in space:

And that's just the beginning of it. In the future, we might see entirely new sports based around zero-G conditions, with maybe a few wells of artificial gravity to keep everyone on their toes. Moving platforms? Water levels? Real life freaking video game levels to fight your opponent in? The world of sports is defined by ridiculous bullshit. You know all that stuff is coming the second the technology allows it. And it'll be great. No. It'll be space great.

But even if we manage to baby-proof everything and come up with some sort of, I don't know, hose system for diaper changing, space just ain't no place for children. You can't make babies exercise the way adults do, which plays merry hell with their physique in a weightless environment. How space radiation and other fun elements of interplanetary travel will mess with them is anyone's guess. Oh, and at the moment, scientists aren't even sure if it's possible to conceive a child in space, at least in the usual way.

Further strengthening its claim as the herpes of online connections, dial-up's back -- in speed and spirit, if not in actual technology -- as Space's official internet connection for the last five years or so. What's more, the internet capacity the International Space Station enjoys is fairly rudimentary: Emails, news, Twitter and the occasional video call. Can't read Cracked in space (though if I'm wrong and an astronaut aboard the ISS happens to read this, holy shit, please let me know. Also, hi!).

The main issue here is distance. While the ISS itself is only an average of 254 miles away, there's a whole lot of signal traveling. So, if an astronaut clicks this link in space, the request will travel 22,000 miles to a network of geosynchronous satellites, which send it down to an earth-based receiver, which processes it and returns the response. That's a whole lot of waiting time to realize you've just been Rickrolled.

YouTube
In related news, if I don't have a column out next week, that means the ISS have a secret death ray.

Luckily, science fully recognizes the situation and is working its ass off to rectify it for aspiring space travelers. There's talk of a functional interplanetary internet, spearheaded by internet luminary Vint Cerf. They're developing completely new series of protocols and storing methods that will one day hopefully be able to bring Mars colonists a comparatively speedy internet access from Earth. Whether this is for their comfort and convenience or whether this is for the constant stream of cat videos that will pacify any chance of a Mars colony secession and uprising is up for speculation.

Pauli Poisuo is a Cracked weekly columnist and freelance editor. Here he is on Facebook and Twitter.

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