Document 12-571-3570 (also titled NASA No. 12 571-3570) is a

hoax A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into pu ...

document originally posted to the Usenet newsgroup

alt.sex alt.sex is a Usenet newsgroup – a discussion group within the Usenet network – relating to human sexual activity. It was popular in the 1990s. An October 1993 survey by Brian Reid reported an estimated worldwide readership for the newsgroup o ...

on November 28, 1989. According to this document, astronauts aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-75 performed a variety of sex acts to determine which positions are most effective in zero gravity. The document goes on to report that of the 10 positions tested, six required the use of a belt and an inflatable tunnel, while four were contingent on hanging on. The document also discusses a video record of the 10 one-hour sessions in the lower deck of the shuttle, and notes that the subjects added their own personal footnotes to help scientists. The real STS-75 mission occurred in 1996, 7 years after the text was published, clearly indicating that the document is a hoax. Nonetheless, many people have been fooled by this document and NASA has had to debunk it on several occasions. In March 2000, NASA's director of media services Brian Welch referred to the document as a "fairly well-known ' urban legend. This fictional document was rediscovered and widely publicized by astronomer and scientific writer Pierre Kohler, who used it as a major source about sex experiments in space in his 2000 book, ''The Final Mission''. Kohler conceded in his book that astronauts are mute on the subject of human sex in orbit, even if they have conducted reproduction research on South African frogs and Japanese fish.

References

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External links

NASA Experiments with Sex in Space
at

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Space sex hoax rises again
Hoaxes in science NASA online 12-571-3570 Internet hoaxes Sexuality and society False documents Document forgeries Sexual urban legends Human spaceflight

See also

References

External links