MOSCOW (Interfax) - Cosmonauts claim that it is forbidden to have sex in space.

"A lot of different commissions -- moral, ethical and medical ones -- that were discussing this, finally ruled that one must not do it so far, because the consequences are unknown for those who would be born," Cosmonaut Talgat Musabayev said in an interview published in the Friday edition of Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

Musabayev also gave a negative answer when asked whether anybody has ever had sex in space. "Definitely not, although there is a lot of idle talk around this," he said.

"We laugh, because we just have no opportunity for this, and the Americans are a very disciplined people," he said.

Touching on other issues, he compared the wages of Russian and foreign astronauts. Musabayev noted that during his second mission, he was the captain, while a flight engineer was a foreigner. "He was paid 31 times more than I, his commander," he noted.

Russian cosmonauts are paid so-called "flight allowances" -- $300 per day, which is taxed. In addition, there are different wage rates for spacewalks, which depend on the time of working outside the spacecraft. There are also different coefficients -- for instance, performing a manual docking earns twice as much pay as supervising an automatic one, Musabayev said.

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