MAIN ARTICLE: Extreme Sports: In Space!
Ken Harvey wants bring sports to space.
Page 2: Space Station: One Big International Family.
Poll Results: Yesterday's poll was lower than average but an almost unanimous result.
Star Trek: In the News. 'Star Trek' repeats were a staple, rated a 24-hour marathon
Yesterday's Comments: "We should cut NASA We have more important priorities right now." - leadingindicator
Today's Poll: Low Earth Orbit Commercial Sports Complex - A good idea?
EXTREME SPORTS IN SPACE:
I would like to thank AH for the email about this story.
For Ex-N.F.L. Star, a Dream of Sports in Space
"GREENBELT, Md. — The game would be called Float Ball. It would combine elements of basketball, football and the Lionel Richie video for "Dancing on the Ceiling" into a sort of free-for-all, compelling weightless players to bounce off walls, obstacles and one another while herding weightless balls of various colors to either end of the playing space, which would be placed inside the cabin of a zero-gravity plane or, possibly, on the moon. Eventually, one day, if all went well, some sort of custom arena would be constructed. On Mars.
"There’s a bonus," said the game’s promoter, Ken Harvey, speaking to an attentive audience of National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineers, technicians and scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center here recently, "where you have to pick up a person holding a certain ball and throw them through a hoop as a sort of extra point."
The football analogy seemed to come easily to mind. Ken Harvey was that Ken Harvey, No. 57 in your Washington Redskins program for much of the late 1990s. Playing linebacker during the largely highlight-free interregnum of Coach Joe Gibbs, Harvey made four appearances in the Pro Bowl.
Now 43, he has not played a down since he dropped out of training camp in 1999. This year, he took a day job in the front office, where he has been charged with serving, according to Redskins management, "as a resource and adviser in the development of responsibility initiatives."
With two sons nearing college age, Harvey has taken the steady, earthbound gig as an anchor while training his restless imagination on a high-concept project he has called, somewhat risibly, SpaceSportilization."
--end quote--
WHERE CAN I PLAY FLOATBALL?
Ken Harvey isn't alone (see "Building a low Earth orbit sports stadium", 'Bill White', Jan 27, 2009) when it comes to sports in space:
"I have long dreamed of giant sports venues in the micro-gravity of low Earth orbit and I found this image which well illustrates the actual size of the space shuttle external tank, in human terms.
If refurbished as habitable volume in low Earth orbit, this tank would provide a fantastic venue for playing various zero-gravity games derived from soccer, hockey, football, lacrosse, etc. . .
But how could anyone possibly pay for it?
What role, if any, should the taxpayers play in financing such a thing?
My thoughts on how to build such a beast (and how it might be financed) is in the body of the diary, along with a poll to explore what attitude Congress, NASA & the public should adopt if such a proposal were actually floated."
In a paper on Future Space there is an article about an Orbital Sports Stadium that is a lot bigger than current proposals:
"Recently the idea of space tourism has gained considerably in credibility, with the publication by NASA, the AIAA and Japan's Federation of Economic Organisations (Keidanren) of reports endorsing its feasibility and recognising it as the most promising commercial market in space. As the space hotel business matures, orbital facilities are expected to grow in size and sophistication, as ever more exotic hotels are developed on Earth to attract customers. Various kinds of sports centers are expected to be popular with guests of space hotels, and this paper considers a full- size sports stadium large enough to accommodate major sports events, 100m in length and 60m in diameter."
--end quote--
I personally like the idea of a commercial Zero-G sports complex. It would involve an activity about half the planetary population follows, in one form or another, and you can gamble on the results, something the other half of the planetary population is involved with in one form or another. So for me it is a win win.
You get corporate sponsers involved. Pay-per-View, commercials, product indorsements and a further long list of secondary income streams.
Oh and did I mention Zero-G reality TV?
ADDITIONAL LINKS:
Space Sportilization
PAGE 2:
The International Space Station (ISS) just got a lot more crowded as the three person crew has been joined by three more.
Space Station: One Big International Family
"The second half of the team — Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, Belgian astronaut Frank De Winne of ESA, and Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk — arrived May 29, boosting the population of long-term residents at the International Space Station (ISS) from its usual three to six.
"It's great having everybody here," NASA astronaut Michael Barratt said during an in-space press conference today. Barratt has been serving onboard the orbiting laboratory as a flight engineer for two months already. "It's great having the extra bodies and the extra noise. And for us, it's three new crewmates to share the adventure and share the workload."
Romanenko, De Winne and Thirsk launched May 27 aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome.
In addition to Barratt, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and station commander Gennady Padalka, a Russian cosmonaut, were already onboard before the newcomers arrived. Though the logistics of coordinating the larger crew are a bit more complicated than before, the influx of people hasn't caused too much disturbance, Barratt said.
"I don't think the routine has changed that much," he said. "There's a lot more of us, and we still tend to congregate in the Russian service module for breakfast. There's just a lot more people to share some stories."
More international
Not only is the station crew now larger than it's ever been before — it's more international. For the first time all five of the station's international partner agencies are represented on orbit at once: NASA; the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos); the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA); the European Space Agency (ESA); and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA)."
--end quote--
POLL RESULTS:
If you missed yesterday's poll please give your opinion by casting your vote.
It was a bit of a surprise, not a single vote for utilizing international launch services. In a similar poll about 20% wanted to use this option.
'Star Trek' repeats were a staple, rated a 24-hour marathon
"The original episodes ran for only three seasons in the late '60s. But when "Star Trek" went into syndication in the '70s, its new audience would launch it into the stratosphere.
"It was a big hit for us," says Ellen Adelstein, owner, along with her late husband, Gene, of KZAZ-TV, Channel 11, which ran "Star Trek" repeats for years.
In 1981, Gene Adelstein decided to run a 24-hour "Star Trek" marathon — the first in the country, says Ellen.
In conjunction with that, she and Gene asked "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry to pick his favorite episodes to include in the marathon.
Roddenberry did them one better. He invited them to his Beverly Hills home for an interview that would also be televised during the marathon, as well as for Ellen's show, "Talk It Over."
"We took the little remote truck that we used for all the basketball and football games to L.A.," says Ellen, who conducted the interview on June 16, 1981.
Wearing oversized glasses not seen since disco died, Ellen sat next to Roddenberry — dressed in a leisure suit — and asked him how he got into writing science fiction. Once the head writer for TV's "Have Gun, Will Travel," Roddenberry likened that show's hero, Paladin, to a science-fiction character.
Science fiction, he said, liberated "Star Trek's" story lines. Television was heavily censored back then, he told Ellen, particularly when dealing with sex or religion. But setting the stories on strange planets with "polka-dotted" people in them allowed him more latitude."
--end quote--
YESTERDAY'S COMMENTS:
"Several things to say here. First of all, I don't think of Star Trek as any kind of religion -- and not one of the "fans" that go so far as to go to conventions and so forth -- but Star Trek has over its lifetime articulated a set of values that many people think of as attractive -- because they ARE attractive. And beyond that, actually in many ways applicable to the world today.
How much better might the world be if we had a truly united Earth in which the power of the nation state were to be greatly curtailed? A non-interference directive? I have seen many many examples of interference leading to bad outcomes in the modern day even without anything like a "Prime directive" on our own planet.
Second: I like the poll results -- I have been annoyed at the notion that lefties are anti-space exploration. While hardly conclusive, this tends to show that that is just not the case.
Third: DISCOVERY. Yes, we should fund all manner of scientific research such as Polywell fusion. While not to say we should fund any and everything, I believe we need a far more liberal attitude as a country to "out there" research that is scientifically plausible, while still adhering to the scientific method and credible researchers. If there is a question and the dollars are small, go for it. You can't win if you don't play" - AndyS In Colorado
"how could this affect space propulsion
US debuts super laser system
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – A US weapons lab on Friday pulled back the curtain on a super laser with the power to burn as hot as a star.
The National Ignition Facility’s main purpose is to serve as a tool for gauging the reliability and safety of the US nuclear weapons arsenal but scientists say it could deliver breakthroughs in safe fusion power....
...Equipment connected to a house-sized sphere can focus 192 laser beams on a small point, generating temperatures and pressures that exist at cores of stars or giant planets.
if it's feasible?" - Jeffersonian Democrat
THE SPACE FUNNY PAGE:
Image provided by JekyllnHyde.
TODAY'S POLL:
Read other NASA and Space diaries on DKOS
