Slashdot Mirror
Astronaut to Run the Boston Marathon From Space
BostonBehindTheScenes writes "American astronaut Sunita Williams will run 26.2 miles on a treadmill on Patriot's Day (April 16th for those of you outside of Massachusetts) while runners on the ground will compete in the 111th Boston Marathon, according to this New Scientist article.
And yes, she is an actual registered participant who qualified by finishing among the top 100 women in the Houston Marathon in 2006. NASA's press release touts this as yet another space first."
I protest! She is wasting precious oxygen paid for by you the taxpayer.
Physiologically speaking, you don't have any gravity for your blood stream, specifically your heart, to handle. In my opinion you can't compare such a run to a real one!
Moooooommm, Sunie's hogging all the oxygen again!
Sunie, Cut it out. Don't antaonize your sister.
But, I gotta win the maaarathonn.
Well, do it quietly, dear. Your sister has experiments to conduct.
meh
Yes, I know this is Slashdot. But I'm a geek and a passionate marathon runner as well...
There's a big difference between running on a treadmill and on a road (besides the boring factor): the relative wind resistance you experience when you move has a very significant impact on your speed. A rule of thumb is that you have to subtract about 1 km/h to your treadmill speed in order to have an idea on how fast you can go on the road.
...like a locker room.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
For the unaware, Patriots' Day commemorates the Battles of Lexington and Concord which are considered to be the first skirmishes of the American Revolution, a conflict that was actually fought be people generally considered to be patriots.
We in Massachusetts have been observing this day long before a certain President co-opted the name to add a bit of jingo to the commemoration of a certain day in September.
Will she be wearing diapers?!
moving all your mass forward/uphill vs basically just bouncing up and down. And of course, in space, you don't even have the resistance of bouncing up and down.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
... the C shell?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Seriously, what would our outer-space neighbours think if they picked that moment to swing by and pay us a visit? They're just going to scratch their heads and think we're some backwards species that powers space flight by putting funny sweaty little creatures on treadmills!
She's going to have tethers to keep her down. As a runner, I think it would be an interesting approximation of running.
While the impact against the treadmill could well be compared to gravity, I wonder whether the zero-gravity will make it harder for her heart to pump blood to her legs. I couldn't imagine running upside down.
Also, having run on the treadmill, I think a good approximation of running outside would be to set the incline to about 1.5%. Of course, that starts to disproportionately work out your quads as opposed to your hamstrings.
I'm a patriot, and I can name it. It was the war of the treasonous, ungrateful colonists ;-)
in space, you don't even have the resistance of bouncing up and down.
I don't think that resistance is quite the right word, but I agree with you in general - what she's doing shouldn't qualify as running the marathon. The biggest problem with long-term space travel is bone loss, and NASA has already proven that just tethering a person to a treadmil and letting them exercise doesn't fix the problem. They still lose bone mass. That's all the proof I need that what she's doing isn't the same as running on earth.
Still, there is a bright side to this. This might just be the longest run on a treadmill in zero-g. And since she has run marathons on the ground, she will be in a good position to report what the differences are and maybe this will lead to better zero-g exercise equipment.
No gravity means no convection. No headwind means little conduction.
Will they generate an artificial headwind using a fan, or does the International Space Station have powerful air conditioning already?
Reduce, reuse, cycle
The ISS is moving at 7.726 km/s (I checked this morning - I'm running Orbitron to track a different satellite.) 26.2 miles converts to 42.165 km, so she should traverse the course length in about 5.5 seconds.
... a two ... a three. Three.
How many steps does it take to complete a marathon from low earth orbit? A one
It looks like I will be running the marathon on my couch and quit possibly in my bed also, probably won't be doing too much running either, but hey...at least I am participating in the Boston Marathon (even though I not in the correct city or state or registered or even running).