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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."
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.
Yea, the Vomit Comet (and similar planes) are just amazingly dangerous. I mean, that's why it's only been in operation for 30 years without incident.
Commercial air planes are incredibly safe. It requires a major fuckup to cause a crash, even when doing odd things (like freefall.)
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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.
God forbid people devote their time to things other than solving all of mans problems. Besides, you obviously have time to post on Slashdot instead of contributing to the greater good of man.
Until then, it's just a media whore stunt.
ALL sports are just media whore stunts. None of that shit matters at all. Really! It's sad that so much effort and money is wasted in this pointless enterprise.
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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
If people find sports entertaining and it increases their quality of life to watch them, I don't have a problem with it.
I don't think the parent has a problem with sports themselves, just how much money and effort are poured into them. All over the country you have cities passing bond measures and tax increases to renovate stadiums that in some cases haven't even made back their original construction costs. It's become a neverending cycle of the cities working to outdo each other on the fanciest complex. Then, if a city has more than one professional team, they have to build new complexes for the other sports, too. Meanwhile these same cities have crime issues, homelessness, crumbling sewer infastructure.
I'm all for an enjoyable sports experience, but sometimes it's just more money than necessary for something that's really unnecessary.
Basically, now that commercial space travel is becoming a possibility, we're going to see tremendous advances not only in terms of safety, but also usability. That's the whole reason air travel is as safe as it is: everyone's been doing it, so we know a lot about it. Space travel's been, essentially, stuck in the lab for the past fifty years or so. If the Wright Brothers had kept as tight of a lid of flight as NASA has kept on space flight, we'd still be crossing the ocean in steamer ships.
I'll be honest, we're throwing science against the wall to see what sticks. -Cave Johnson
The enemy gate is down.
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.
Something tells me humans can't survive 200+ psi.