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Zero-Gravity Sports League In Development
Jonathan writes "A company that provides weightless flights to paying space tourists is developing a league around a sport that is designed for a zero-G environment." From the article: "The sport is called 'Paraball'...originally short for Parabolic Football," Persaud told SPACE.com. "The game really isn't like football anymore as the rules have developed, but the name has stuck," he added. [..] "The International Parabolic Sports League (IPSL) I plan to start with seven U.S. based teams, plus one Toronto-based team. Initially all League games would be played from the Las Vegas, Nevada airport, but we'll have 'home' games when the Zero-Gravity Corporation are able to bring their aircraft to that many cities over the time span of the league's season."
The "ten mile high" club
It'll be the only team sport where a airplane crash would take out both teams, the officials, and staff. Seriously, does anyone know how safe these fights are?
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
It would be nice if the article gave a few details about the sport - just basic stuff like the number of balls or players involved.
But hey, let's play space football!
Looks like polo and fox hunting is being replaced as the choice sport of the world's rich
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Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Wake me when either a:) they invent anti-gravity or b:) they actually play in orbit.
Until then, it's just a media whore stunt.
Like car racing, people will watch just hoping for the big crash and burn.
The battle-school sport in Ender's Game is complex enough.
I can even think of a few ways for the freezing guns.
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and they have had how many clients in their history? That would be a few short of any type of team.
Zero-g football, eh? Do they have a player called Jim Bexley Speed?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Anyone want to partner with me to develop league of swimming hamsters or weight-lifting mice? Those are sports we can all enjoy (watching, anyway). They could be the WWF of the 21st century.
But wait, let me patent that, first.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
In his research on space sports, Collins and colleagues have speculated about water sports where space tourists can dive through large blobs of water.
In other news, many games eventually end up turning in to an impromptu old school favorite - 'dodgevomit.'
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Finally, I have an excuse to name my twin sons Jim and Bexley.
hi mom!
Now if only we had a way to simulate Zero-G for longer than 20 seconds
Otherwise I see some really short games with some really motion-sick players.
Looks like polo and fox hunting is being replaced as the choice sport of the world's rich
The conception that polo is only for the rich is horse hockey. It hasn't been true for years, as if you and your teammates have bikes, you can play polo. Segway polo, on the other hand...
This sport would re-define the term "Air Ball" into a good thing.
...no one can hear you lose more money than the XFL.
(maniacal laughter)
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In zero gravity, things wouldn't travel in parabolic arcs. You need gravity for that.
Not that "zero gravity" exists, anyway. If I REALLY want to shift into Pedantic Nerd mode, where there's matter, there's gravity.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
Paraball is seen as a cross of several sports...and has a lot of unique aspects too.
Calvinball!!!
Sounds interesting, although I'd love to know what characteristics the ideal zero-G athlete would have. Would it help to be thin and light in a weightless environment, or would an earth-bound athletic build work best?
Assuming zero-G contact sports appear, mass and inertia would suddenly make a huge difference to play, as would the ability to have three dimensional game areas. I'm surprised that space sports haven't really made it into mainstream sci-fi - short of Kirk prancing around arenas and the like. I have a vague feeling Arthur C Clarke touched on it once, but I can't recall the book title.
One question though; if swimming took place in zero-G, would you move through the water, or just scoop it out of the pool?
The losing team should get tossed out of the plane (with parachutes of course), with the winners just getting flown straight home. Would make it a bit more dramatic for TV.
Yes. It's pedantic and not semantic. Well done!
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Do you have bleachers to seat 20,000 people on an airplane? It's a nice little fantasy but there's no way a sport like that could ever be profitable.
In truth it's just mimicing zero gee. It's really freefall inside an airplane when you get right down to it. The major differences between it and sky diving are no chutes, no rushing air and you have walls around you to push off from. Oh you you don't have that sudden decelloration when you hit the ground. The nausea is worse than zero gees because it's the negative gees you get from falling. Seems like a pointless novelty but so is Reality TV.
In "The Inventions of Daedalus", scientist and author David E. Jones points out that Xenon is a noble gas with a density greater than water. If you combine Xenon with oxygen and put it in a really big tank, you will have a breathable gas in a tank, in which human being can float. By combining xenon with appropriate amounts of nitrogen, you can get the density close to that of humans, and it will be similar to weightlessness. Wikipedia points out that Xenon has some anaesthetic effects, which would come in handy for those bruising scrimmages...
"The game really isn't like football anymore as the rules have developed, but the name has stuck," he added.
Ahh, much like American 'football' then?
Here's the company that is behind it:
http://www.ipxentertainment.com/
There's also a short survey there that may be a little simplistic: http://www.ipxentertainment.com/6.html
Looks like this will be coming to us on bittorrent at spacechannel.tv
Because the vomit comet only has like twenty five seconds in a minute long flight. A twenty second long game may be about right for the average American kid nowadays but I don't see the entertainment value at all.
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Now they need to play some Space Quidditch!
The vomit comet gives you seconds of "micrgravity" and its crappy at that. You can't do protein and crystal research in that. Its better that they find commercially viable outlets - like this, commercial space tourists, etc. - to keep themselves afloat.
Protein and crystal growth requires days and weeks of microgravity. And don't say ISS... the vibrations of humans aboard are significant enough to disturb it. You need a freefloating platform with no humans or vibrating experiments onboard. Or at least an experiment bay tethered to ISS by a loose nylon cable with no tension over the experiment period.
-everphilski-
Cause thats all you got in a vomit comet...
-everphilski-
Hey, I see you complaining instead.
It'd be funny if the stars of the game would preach fuel efficient cars
Obviously these guys are trying to break the rules. When it comes to entertainment, porn has to do it first. FIRST Zero-G porn movies, THEN sports. Duh...
Does the world really need yet another elitist sport not played by the best athletes in the world and played only by those with the means to afford such a sport? How about we try using the thousands of baseball fields around the United States that go unused - even fields that exist in urban environments.
Maybe zero gravity development leagues will be part of the 2006 fiscal budget for inner city youth to participate.
Hagrin.com
...but won't all those wheelchairs flying around hurt someone?
Oh, you said "parabolic" -- I thought... oh, nevermind.
sweet, a sport that lets you move in 3d space ... now you can do even more crazy stuff!
this would be one intense sport.. fast-paced, zany multi-directional nonsensical movement and stuff; it'd be like football on crack
I like to see space porn movies .... If this is just a PR campaign for their company.. this would definitely draws some attention.
Don't forget that the athletes have to deal with 1.8G pullouts AND there are of course options for Martian and Lunar and other percentages of 1 Earth Gravity
As indicated by the Wikipedia article you linked to, xenon has the density of 5.864 g/L at 0 C. This can easily be double checked using the atomic weight and knowing that a mole at STP takes up 22.4 L: 131.3 g/mol / (22.4 L/mol) = 5.85 g/L. Water has a density of about 1 kg/L.
I love how they try to invent new sports, in order to make money. If a sport makes X $ per year, then we can invent a new sport, and also make X $ a year. This makes no sense, as people don't want to watch new sports. They've tried it a few times, and it never really works that well. Sometimes, you get small cult followings, but never do you get to the level of the mega sports that are currently popular. This is going to go the way of slam ball. Which was a similarly stupid Idea. Watching people dunk isn't exciting once you realize that anyone could dunk if you gave them a trampelline.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Wouldn't this mean that Xenon would be mined at the bottom of lakes, and perhaps the ocean?
I dont think it was a joke. And even if it was, there are many people who honestly believe this. The problem is that few of them understand the actual politics, etc behind the progress of science. There are actually research projects involve Zero-G bases in new areas of cancer research (quick digging came up with this article, I've heard of others). The truth is that the development of any new technologies will provide new avenues in this research.
This Zero-G Sports League is awesome because if there is one seemingly pointless thing that people love to spend money on, it's sports. If you don't believe me look at statistics about the money spent on beer for the celebration of the Super Bowl and other such events. If we can get a successful space based sport then other things such as advertising will move to put money into space based work, which will motivate the market and give a major boost to research in that direction.
The moral of the story: this type of work really is indirectly contributing to research that could one day cure cancer.
If you can't say something nice, make sure you have something heavy to throw.
That would be SO COOL. If you don't like the anaesthetic stuff, or if Xenon + oxygen is too rich and makes people lightheaded or something, just give 'em small little air canisters. Easier than underwater, but still seperate from what they're swimming in.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
Quoth ThinkGeek: Obey gravity, it's the law!
Wait, it doesn't seem like that would work at all. It doesn't look like Xenon has a density anywhere near that of water. And even if it did, as a gas Xenon would be compressable, which means the density would vary dramatically with depth -- you'd have a particular height you floated at, and going down ten meters would double the pressure and the density and the lift. If it really had a density close to that of water, it would act like (compressable) water, and you'd float on it at a certain level. But it doesn't and you wouldn't.
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There was a game for mac, around the time of the Macintosh Classic called Pararena. It was a single player, or network multiplayer game where you have two people in a bowl like arena and two goals, similar to soccer. Two players ride hovering platforms and fly around the arena, trying to get the ball into their goal. If you fall out of the arena, the other player gets a point. If you get knocked out of the arena, the other player gets a point.
I wasted quite a few days playing that game...
The enemy gate is down.
The article didn't have too much info on Zero-G's service, so I thought I'd chime in. Basically, Zero-G sells flights on their modified Boeing 727 at $3,750 each. Each flight has a total of 15 parabolas, which alternate between 1.8 g's and either zero g's, lunar g's, or martian g's; each of the low/zero gravity periods lasts 30 seconds.
John Carmack, of id Software fame, flew with Zero-G last year and wrote down some of his thoughts. He was pretty pleased with it, and got some ideas for his spaceflight company. He also recorded a video of messing around in zero-gravity. Here's an excerpt from his write-up:
The time went by so quickly that you completely forgot half the things you planned on trying. A couple of us were doing low gravity judo throws, and I took a shot at the worlds first flying armbar in zero gravity (didn't work out too well). Most of us that were doing fairly aggressive bouncing around landed on our heads at least once, so I have some concern that they will eventually have someone test the liability waiver. The bottom line is that I highly recommend the experience, and I am almost certainly going to do it again at some point.
Why limit it to international play? They should call it the Intergalactic Parabolic Sports League and send some invites for the 2505 games.
I just RTFA; I had though it was about Motorcycles http://www.zerogravity-racing.com/
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Here's a link to some of the photos taken on board with some of our tourists: zero-g.smugmug.com
Here's a link to a recent local news video covering our very first flights from KSC: www.wesh.com/spacenews/5267185/detail.html
And, for those of you who watched American TV last night, you would have seen us on NBC's Three Wishes and if you're really a couch potato, you've seen us on The Apprentice, The Biggest Loser, and The Rebel Millionare
Is this THE Tom Clancy? I'm a big admirer of your work, and I'm glad to see you're already working on a new book in which neofascists kill the Miami Heat with a KC-130.
*****
Dear Mary,
I yearn for you tragically,
A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
I thought I was the only one annoyed by that. It's good to see there are others out there.
I so wish I could afford to do something like this... your soo lucky!
So far we've had 80 something year old men and women fly with us...so chances are that if you seriously start saving now for it, the intersection of how much you've saved and how much the price has come down will be sooner than you think!
This is apparently done by artificially creating zero-G environments.
:-)
Which can't be done for a very long duration at a time, right?
What got me wondering first when reading this was how they can all get a game going during that short time, let alone start building an entire league around it! But then again, sumo wrestling matches are usually over within seconds, so maybe I shouldn't open my mouth here.
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They felt the need to explain why the name was similar to football? With the only word in common being "ball"? I would worry more about explaining why they used "para" from the word "parabolic".
If you throw a ball in zero gravity, it will travel in a straight line, not along a parabola.
Gravity makes a thrown ball travel along a parabola. So being designed for zero-g, "paraball" is the very first official ball-based game that has absolutely nothing to do with parabolas.
Although if you want to pick nits, since the airplane is travelling along a parabola to create a zero-g environment for the players, the ball within the plane is travelling along a parabola relative to the earth. Relative to the playing field (the plane), it's all straight lines.
Alright, Football players in the NFL practice EVERY DAY. They practice throughout the offseason, and for hours upon hours leading up to the preseason, and then they pracitce every day until the season ends. I'm sure other professional atheletes train just as rigorously, and with good reason, they get paid a lot to play a sport. How are these paraball players supposed to practice? I don't see 7 of these planes flying 6 hours a day, doing parabola after parabola, for 9 months out of the year. Hell, I don't even think it's realistic that they do parabolas three times a week for two months. That's a whole lot of fuel, a whole lot of crew time, bottom line, a whole lot of overhead. Say what you want, but I refuse to believe the will be able to practice on the ground, and have it anywhere near worthwhile. Think about this. Remember astroturf, and how football players who practiced on grass all summer long would take to playing on astroturf, and they'd get injuries left and right. It's because an athlete is a finely tuned machine, who has taught his body to do a small number of things, extremely effeciently. You and I could play football on either field all day long and it wouldn't matter, but these athletes know their abilities so well, that when you change any small variable, not only does their effeciency drop exponentially, but they even end up injuring themselves! The difference between grass and astroturf is a lot smaller than the difference between normal gravity, and total weightlessness.
You know, the Porn industry would pay you guys' big bucks!!! Think about it; a new DVD titled "Zero-G Spot" or something. I mean, video of zero-g sex in action would be very unique to the market. Talk about a venture partnership to capitalize on.
Also, imagine Zero-G fighting championships. Ohh AWSOME idea! Spike TV would love this. Hell, a new martial art might even be formed out of it (bouncing off walls and stuff to go for that headlock). The kicks, punches, rebounds *drool*
Life is not for the lazy.
Well, there's always Underwater Football. Its got simmilar aspects of 3-dimentionality, and it's fun.
The enemy goalie is down
Elitist, sure, but what other major sports are like that?
Kids get scouted in high school and get scholarships to colleges for football, hockey, baseball, and other sports. It doesnt matter how rich they are or what school they go to, if theyre good then a scout will come check them out.
Hell, the NBA is full of kids who drop out of high school to play profesionally.
Maybe another elitist sport is a good thing. If kids cant afford to play it, then perhaps they'll stay in school and go to college.
Soon, just keep checking the ZeroG website.
Just as a quick FYI, when I tried to go to the main page in Firefox/Linux, I just got a blank screen, presumably because of Flash/Shockwave. You folks might want to add a normal link at the bottom of the splash screen to a page like this.
Thank you, I will report that immediately.
I came up with this AWESOME sport where we could use military-spec Humvees to play polo.. But, the field would be the inside of a shopping mall. It would be awesome because the Humvees would totally trash the place. Also, the ball would be solid gold because it looks pretty and would be nice and heavy for the Humvees.
But, the stupid venture capitalists said it was too expensive.. And then I have to see this?! WTF.. My game was WAYY cheaper than this proposal.
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"Negative-G" is a simplistic way of describing the experience of moving within the frame of reference of the plane's interior. What they mean is "differential acceleration of plane and passanger in a given direction" using the arbritary choice that "gravitaional acceleration toward Earth" is +1G because it is constant for both plane and passenger. In level flight the plane has an upward acceleration of 1G so it is, in effect, "weightless", meanwile the passangers arse still feels 1G of downward acceleration on to the seat inside the plane (normal feeling of gravity).
It's all about frames of reference, there is no "fixed point" anywhere in the Universe, Physicist are therefore free to choose the most convienient one.
Mixing frames of reference can be conceptually difficult, it's easier for the vomit comet's stewardess to say...
"Negative-G is when turbulence accelerates the plane downward faster than the 9.8m/sec/sec of gravity"
.....silence....
"it makes you stick to the ceiling"
...knowing nods all round.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I think you've been huffing a bit too much Xenon yourself - if you even read the Wikipedia article you linked to, you will see that the physical characteristics of Xenon, in particular it's density, is 5.9g/L - water weighing in at pretty much spot on 1000g/L. Now, I'd like to see a gas that's heavier than a liquid, but it's just not going to happen.
What would be cool would be a huge tank full of Perfluorocarbon which is the fluid used in Liquid Breathing systems
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The world doesn't have to need it. Nobody has to need it, because "need" is utterly tangential. It's their money, not yours. Go take your egalitarianism, stick it in your pipe and smoke it.
BTW, seems to me that squash would be a more sensible zero-g game than football. It's fast, simple, ballistic, and it only needs two participants.
Zero-gravity pr0n is obviously the biggest business opportunity.
Screw their Zero G business! I'm going to start my own zero-g company, with blackjack! And hookers!
We're getting closer and closer to playing blitzball!
Community, Identity, Stability.
wow, some pretty clueless replies. why would you think they'd be using xenon at 1atm? noble gases are the same thing they mix into dive tanks for deeper dives to handle high pressure. just because you can pull a number off a web page doesn't mean you understand it, I guess.
In his research on space sports, Collins and colleagues have speculated about water sports where space tourists can dive through large blobs of water. Blitzball anyone?
Something tells me humans can't survive 200+ psi.
My question is whether anybody is likely to break Jim Bexley Speed's all-time single-season three-dimensional yardage record. I honestly don't think the London Jets ever had a better Roof Attacker.
qntm.org
You know, the Porn industry would pay you guys' big bucks!!! Think about it; a new DVD titled "Zero-G Spot" or something. I mean, video of zero-g sex in action would be very unique to the market.
...
There is another theory
The Uranus Experiment
The replies to my note are quite correct. I tracked down my old copy of "The Inventions of Daedalus", and in the chapter on the xenon tank David Jones notes that the critical density of xenon is 1154 kg / m^3 at 16.6 degrees C and (important point) 58 atmospheres of pressure. This is very likely not suitable for human use. He also notes that regular saline can dissolve enough oxygen at 5 atmospheres to breath, and that some fluorocarbon liquids can hold enough oxygen at one atmoshere. Still a cool idea!
Blitzball, here I come!