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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'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.
More like 100 mile high club.. but I think the mechanics might get difficult with not gravity to hold you together..
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.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
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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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.
(maniacal laughter)
Get your Unix fortune now!
Paraball is seen as a cross of several sports...and has a lot of unique aspects too.
Calvinball!!!
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
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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With an ideal point mass and any second object with any tangential speed as the initial situation will never crash into that point mass, only orbit it. If you are far enough from the point, you'll also experience zero G (if you are close, you'll experience the effects of, say, your feet being farther away from the point mass than your head; and any ball or something you throw will, after time, establish an orbit on its own, distinct from your own -- however, this is also true if you throw something away from ISS or anything).
There is no magic zero G space in space. Remember, the sun is holding the complete solar system together. Still, you can experience zero G, by just leaving Earth, but that is only because continous free fall is practical there. You don't "see" gravity, as the floor, walls and objects you travel with are experiencing the same effect.
Cause thats all you got in a vomit comet...
-everphilski-
Parabolic refers to the flight path used by the planes in order to simulate the weightlessness you typically see in spaceflight, not the path of the ball or anything else inside the plane.
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...
but I think the mechanics might get difficult with not gravity to hold you together.
Some of us are developing "handles" to alleviate that problem.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
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.
Basically, what happens is that you get sent upwards toward the ceiling. In fact, a slight negative at the start of a zero gravity parabola lifts people off the floor mats in pleasent way.
Trust me, I've done it ;)
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.
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.
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.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.