Sports in Space
In The Technological Society (1964), Jacques Ellul writes, “sport is linked with the technical world because sport itself is a technique.” Various societies have used sport as a technique to achieve physical and mental “efficiency” or to live in harmony with natural environments and cycles. Societies also use sport to distract and entertain; but, charitably, we can say that in doing so, sports also celebrate human solidarity and achievement, as well as the drive of self-betterment.
Meanwhile, NASA, other countries’ space agencies, and the private sector are all serious about space colonization. The notion of long-term habitation in space, and the stationing and community development that might occur on other planetary or lunar bodies, is driven both by an awareness of the existential threats that exist here on earth and the idea that outward expansion naturally accompanies technological, commercial, and cultural development. It’s challenging to adequately express the revolutionary impacts of this challenge on robotics, human health, food production, fuel technology, human psychology and education, law, international relations, interpersonal communication, philosophy, art and aesthetics. But it seems obvious that humans who settle in space will need recreation and entertainment at least as much as we do on Earth.
There’s a certain spiritual affinity between sport and space. Alan Shepard hit those golf balls on the moon only around 25 and 40 yards (average yardage on earth for drives is 200–275 yards), but in doing so, he heralded the advent of sports in space. Baseball fans remember when, far away on the International Space Station, Garrett Reisman threw the ceremonial first pitch of a Boston Red Sox-New York Yankees game in 2008. Again, not a spectacular pitch, but a symbolically significant one.
And why not more entertainment in space? Space Entertainment Enterprise, the company producing Tom Cruise’s upcoming space movie, is expanding the reach of the studios it is building adjacent to ISS. “The new facilities will allow for the production and broadcasting of all kinds of creative content from 250 miles above the Earth’s surface.” The filmed-in-space barrier was broken earlier by the Russians, with the movie Challenge, about “a surgeon who has to operate on a sick cosmonaut in space because his medical condition prevents him from returning to Earth to be treated.” Actor Yulia Peresild filmed the scenes on the ISS. Sports in space, though, have an authenticity that filming in space, as cool as it is, can’t claim. By December 2024, SEE will have an arena able to host sporting events — at least that’s what their press release says.
With the expansion and conceptual evolution of sports in space comes the need for sports governance — otherwise, how can fans and players yell at the referees? Enter Space Games Federation, “the first governing and sanctioning body for competitive sports played in zero or micro-gravity.” Staffed by folks very close to the space industry, but also with expertise and interest in esoteric and experimental sports, the SGF “collectively envisions the past, present, and future of the space industry as invaluable to the human experience,” and seeks to establish consistent rules, norms, public accessibility and media protocols for the variety of sports played up there.
And just what will be played up there? To an extent, we’ll play what we already play. We’ve already seen spacefarers play baseball, chess, soccer, gymnastics, basketball, and football. You can watch a cool video of ISS residents playing zero-G badminton. Another video features flight engineer Barry Wilmore discussing football in space with the SEC college sports conference television network. But there will also be brand new space sports, specifically contextualized by space conditions. Imagine space yachting, having solar-sail races around the moon. Or dune buggy races right on the lunar surface. Or games with jumping and throwing and dodging and all manner of things in low gravity. Space Games Federation is even sponsoring contests, inviting creative types to design new space sports. Ideas include “guiding a magnetic ball through hoops in space” as well as “space dodgeball” and “racing the clock to tie an increasingly complicated series of knots while tethered to a teammate.” Educational materials about space flight and colonization include hypothetical scenarios of playing games like “Martian hopscotch” and other sports on Mars, to illustrate how differing gravity fields work.
With SGF and other global space federations lobbying to get the International Space Station awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, it’s also appropriate to talk about the similarities between space development and the sports community in calling for cosmopolitanism, peace, and international cooperation. “When astronauts go up to space, they experience a paradigm shift,” says Pakistani astronaut Namira Salim. “They see the world going further and further away; the political boundaries disappear, then all they see is continents and then, they just see the globe. When they come back, they have a whole new perspective and all they want to do is work for peace on earth.” Similarly, the United Nations points out that sporting is a handmaiden of peace: “Sport works primarily by bridging relationships across social, economic and cultural divides within society, and by building a sense of shared identity and fellowship among groups that might otherwise be inclined to treat each other with distrust, hostility or violence.”
Technology promises a whole lot to humans acting collectively. Technology can gather and store information used to remain accountable to customers, clients, and constituents. Technology can transport and house people through hostile external environments like space, sea, and extreme weather. And, technology can mediate entertaining physical competitions between top athletes or ordinary people — on earth or in space.
