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Sex on Mars is going to be risky, but it could create a new human subspecies
In a new research paper published in Futures, an international team of scientists examines the challenges of reproduction on the Martian surface. It's a risky proposition, but if humans succeed in conceiving, carrying, and birthing offspring on another world it might actually be the start of a new species.
In the paper, the researchers tackle a huge number of potential problems that could crop up when humans are finally ready to rear young on Mars. The first and most obvious hurdle is the low gravity environment, which could pose a serious threat to the conception and pregnancy processes that seem so simple here on Earth.
[...] The paper also examines the inherent challenges of bolstering the numbers of a small colony of settlers on the planet. The concept of "love" might have to take a back seat to pure survival, with men and women being paired up by their biology rather than emotion. Additionally, some individuals may never be allowed to have children due to undesirable traits that are a risk to the colony as a whole.
In a somewhat scary aside, the researchers also note that editing the genes of future Mars babies might be an easy way to increase the prospects of survival.
Also at Live Science.
Biological and social challenges of human reproduction in a long-term Mars base (DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2018.04.006) (DX)
Related: Space colonization and suffering risks: Reassessing the "maxipok rule" (DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2018.04.008) (DX)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday May 31 2018, @10:12PM
Historically, absolutely.
Take, for instance, the Biblical law that if you rape an unmarried woman, you have to buy off her father and marry her, and you can't divorce her. I highly doubt the rapist loved his victim, since people don't as a rule harm people they love, and I doubt even more that the woman in question is happy with this arrangement either and any love that conceivably develops would be more the result of Stockholm Syndrome than anything else.
Or consider the long history of arranged marriages, where the conversation could really go something like "Mary, this is Joseph. Joseph, this is Mary." 15 minutes later: "You may now kiss the bride."
The main evolutionary advantage of emotional partnership as opposed to purely sexual partnership is that you have 2 adults invested in the upbringing of any children rather than just 1. But it was and still is not uncommon for those emotional partnerships to not match the actual parentage of said children, or to have unrelated adults who happened to be around doing the child-rearing.
The real aberration is that in most of the world today a single marital relationship is expected to provide sexual exclusivity, emotional closeness, romantic love, economic partnership, child-rearing partnership, etc. Both historically and today, it's been quite common for all of those to be split up in various ways.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.