Sex, Fighting, and Medical Issues in Space: A Risk Management Issue

Summary:  It’s highly unlikely that when NASA began implementing the country’s space program that any of the risk management issues considered was the potential for sex in space or space sexual harassment liabilities. However space travel brings with it many potential issues, especially when the passengers are tourists, and not well-trained professional astronauts. While some space trips can be a few hours, many projected future trips will last days, weeks or years. Such close contact among travelers can lead to many different situations from disagreements to medical emergencies to consensual or non-consensual sex acts. During the pandemic, behavior on passenger airplanes became an issue and people acted out over mask rules.

Spacecraft are designed to get into space with as few extras as possible given the massive amount of energy needed to get a spacecraft off the ground and into space. Certainly no spacecraft has a working hospital within its confines for an extreme medical emergency. Before privatization of space travel, astronauts had to undergo extreme medical evaluation and training under intense circumstances. This type of individual evaluation and training is not feasible for a space tourism company to offer or require for each passenger on a flight. However, along with all of the other risk considerations to consider with space tourism these types of potential liability issues should be looked at from a risk management perspective.