Astronauts,
by necessity, work hard in space. But during their precious time off aboard the
International Space Station (ISS), some spaceflyers are picking their brains to
come up with the future of space sports.
"Sometimes,
you just develop them by happenstance," said NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman,
who is living aboard the space station as an Expedition 17 flight engineer.
The mundane
task of filling large water bags took on a whole new meaning, he said last week
in a televised interview.
"We started
tossing them kind of like a medicine ball, and we realized that you could toss
and catch and then go for a ride on this big thing as it takes you away,"
Reisman said. "So there's all kinds of possibilities, and if there's any good
ideas out there, let me know. We'll try it."
Last week,
Reisman tossed out the opening pitch for his beloved New York Yankees' during
their game against the Boston Red Sox. After years of throwing baseballs in
arcs to counter gravity, he had to relearn how to throw in a straight line, he
said.
His former Expedition
16 commander Peggy Whitson, who landed on April 19 with two crewmates, had
a different tack. She held a flying relay race between the station's joint
six-astronaut crew of the Expedition 16 and 17 crews.
"We raced from one end of a module, relayed with the person waiting at the
other end three modules away, and then sprinted back and sent a third person,"
Whitson said. "So it was pretty fun."
Her team,
which included Reisman, won, she added.
Finding
a sport
Space
station astronauts are scheduled to work an average of about 6 1/2 hours each
day, with about two hours set aside for exercise and about 8 1/2 reserved for
sleep. But astronauts, like the rest of us, will squeeze in some fun during
their off-hours.
"They're
going to be creative, they're going to play with things," said Walter Sipes, a
NASA psychologist specializing in long-duration spaceflight support at the Johnson
Space Center (JSC) in Houston. "These might be lower priority activities, but
they're higher on keeping the morale up."
While they
don't have a sports locker, station astronauts do have some gear at their
disposal, Sipes told SPACE.com.
In addition
to their space treadmill and stationary bike, they've played weightless
basketball, Frisbee and tossed boomerangs, to name a few. But the rules change in
the absence of gravity.
"It
definitely takes skill to be able to throw objects in space," said Whitson,
adding it has to be developed just like the ability to move in weightless.
"Overcoming an opponent requires some skill. I think there'll be a lot of new
games that they come up with."
Low gravity
games have gained some
ground on Earth as well.
Passengers
have played dodge ball and tag during short periods of weightlessness on the
rollercoaster-like parabolic flights of a modified Boeing 727-200 jet operated
by the Zero Gravity Corp., the Las Vegas, Nev.-based firm has said in the past.
On recent
station missions, astronauts have performed their some own orbital versions of
terrestrial athletics:
- In March,
Japanese astronaut Takao Doi threw a small boomerang aboard the station to
see if it would come back without gravity. It apparently did, according to
Japanese space agency officials.
- Last
year, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, a die-hard Boston Red Sox fan, ran
the Boston Marathon from orbit in 4 hours, 24 minutes.
- In 2006,
European astronaut Christer Fugelsang, a former Swedish national Frisbee
champion, kept a Frisbee aloft inside the station for 20 seconds - thanks
to the lack of gravity - to break the previous world record of 16.72
seconds for a single toss.
- Russian
cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin also whacked a
golf ball outside the space station during a 2006 spacewalk, echoing
Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Shepard's tee off on the moon in 1971.
- Last
year, NASA astronaut Clay Anderson used a football, baseball and make-shift
bat to demonstrate the effects of weightless for students on Earth.
Judy Hayes,
NASA's division chief of human adaptation and countermeasures at JSC, said
mission planners sometimes work with astronauts to help fold their sports
interests into their daily routines.
Williams'
marathon run, for example, required the astronaut to squeeze extra training
into her already packed worked day to prepare for the event, Hayes said. But
the training and marathon also counted as her daily exercise allotment, she
added.
"It's good
for them to come up with creative ideas. It gives them some entertainment and
helps them adapt," Hayes told SPACE.com. "It's very individualized."
Teaming
up in orbit
Since
astronauts first began living aboard the space station in 2000, the outpost's primary
crew has averaged about three people per mission, though two-man expeditions
maintained the orbiting lab as NASA recovered from the 2003 Columbia shuttle
tragedy.
But aside
from Soyuz crew changes and visiting shuttles of up to seven astronauts, which
push station population to between six and 10 people, a nominal three-person
crew does not split well for competitive team sports.
That will
change in 2009, when NASA and its partners plan to double the station's crew
size to six astronauts per mission. With a larger crew, comes wider sport
options, Sipes said.
"Naturally,
when you get more people, you can certainly do other team-based activities,"
Sipes said. "And it's morale-building, crew cohesion-building, when you play
those."
For
Reisman, who will spend about three months aboard the station, there is time to
come up with more new sports.
"I've
thought about it, but haven't come up with any really good answers," he said.
"There are all kinds of unique sporting things and games you could play in this
environment."
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