Here is a poser for you: games in space.

For this thread you need to come up with viable games you can play in a space station or on the moon. I thought of one, maybe you can think of others. Lets not go there to sex games ok? I am thinking about stuff like table tennis, for instance. The one I thought about a lot is a 3D version of billiards. You would have an egg shaped 'board' with holes and the Q ball floating near one end and the rack maybe like a pyramid near the other end and the egg has lots of holes to run a poolstick through and you have holes in the egg with pouches to collect balls shot through, the aim like regular billiards. I like this idea because its self-contained, not needing more than a few meters around. Any other ideas? Don't google anything here, make up your own versions.

Originally posted by sonhouse
For this thread you need to come up with viable games you can play in a space station or on the moon. I thought of one, maybe you can think of others. Lets not go there to sex games ok? I am thinking about stuff like table tennis, for instance. The one I thought about a lot is a 3D version of billiards. You would have an egg shaped 'board' with holes and th ...[text shortened]... a few meters around. Any other ideas? Don't google anything here, make up your own versions.

what if you bring a GAMEboy?

Originally posted by sonhouse
For this thread you need to come up with viable games you can play in a space station or on the moon. I thought of one, maybe you can think of others. Lets not go there to sex games ok? I am thinking about stuff like table tennis, for instance. The one I thought about a lot is a 3D version of billiards. You would have an egg shaped 'board' with holes and th ...[text shortened]... a few meters around. Any other ideas? Don't google anything here, make up your own versions.

also, chinese checkers.

Originally posted by Zelinda
also, chinese checkers.

Sure, or a chess board or score four or monopoly but I mean physical games like tennis or tetherball. Hmm, tetherball, now there is something that could be adapted to zero gravity. You know about tetherball?

Originally posted by sonhouse
You know about tetherball?

Yes, played it when I was maybe 8.
Racqetball would be fun in zero gravity.

Originally posted by SJ247
Yes, played it when I was maybe 8.
Racqetball would be fun in zero gravity.

Yeah, thats right, for kids. I played it when I was 6 or 7, same age group, funny don't remember the rules but when you get to be 97...
anyway, I was thinking about games that wouldn't take up a huge volume. Now say we're a couple hundred years into the future and we have huge caverns carved out on the moon then volume would not be such a problem as it would be, say, on the ISS. Obviously, you need something bigger than the ISS to have much of ANY kind of physical game but even a really large space station would have its limits in terms of volume available for physical recreation. Racquetball would be interesting on the moon, assuming you have carved out a large enough space, and you could play it there, the ball goes so darned fast that the reduced gravity would not make much differance. In fact I think that would work in zero gravity because of the speed of the ball. So racquetball is a definite possiblity. On the other hand, tennis would be a very differant game on the moon at 1/6th gravity or volleyball, can you imagine the serve and volley there?
The serve in tennis would not curve down so fast so it would tend to go a bit farther, not much I imagine but those long crosscourt volleys would really have to be modified if you used the same sized court.
Maybe a longer court would help. A zero gravity version might look like a cylinder with the net going all the way round the middle with a hole of such and such a size to allow the ball to go back and forth.
I wonder if it could work if you had to make it part of a donut shaped
space station. Here making shots going into the curve would be differant than making shots to the outside of the curve.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Yeah, thats right, for kids. I played it when I was 6 or 7, same age group, funny don't remember the rules but when you get to be 97...
anyway, I was thinking about games that wouldn't take up a huge volume. Now say we're a couple hundred years into the future and we have huge caverns carved out on the moon then volume would not be such a problem as it wou ...[text shortened]... shots going into the curve would be differant than making shots to the outside of the curve.

I think both tennis and volleyball on the moon would really improve my game.

Originally posted by SJ247
I think both tennis and volleyball on the moon would really improve my game.

I think I can see how to simulate both games on earth:
if you to play on a court that was very porous and you had a big air blower underneath, the resulting vertical wind would knock the ball up and away just like reduced gravity. Now to find the funding....
BTW I noticed the sardonicism in your voice🙂
Lets see, I could send NASA a grant paper, 'Trajectory compensation for lunar sub-orbital manouvers' What do you think?

Originally posted by sonhouse

BTW I noticed the sardonicism in your voice🙂
Lets see, I could send NASA a grant paper, 'Trajectory compensation for lunar sub-orbital manouvers' What do you think?[/b]

HAHAHA, I will respond to that after I look up sardonicism.

Originally posted by SJ247
HAHAHA, I will respond to that after I look up sardonicism.

Haha to you, I think I just made it up. Sardonic aint it!

Originally posted by sonhouse
For this thread you need to come up with viable games you can play in a space station or on the moon.

If you mean game at zero gravity you can rule out the moon. Moon has of course gravity but only a sixth of the earths.

When playing a ball gami in zero gravity you have to account the Newtonian action-reaction principle. Makes things harder than one might think.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
If you mean game at zero gravity you can rule out the moon. Moon has of course gravity but only a sixth of the earths.

When playing a ball gami in zero gravity you have to account the Newtonian action-reaction principle. Makes things harder than one might think.

You hit a ball with a fist travelling at 30 mph, afterwards the ball flies with 30 mph while you fist lost it's speed on impact. I see no problems there.

Originally posted by TheMaster37
You hit a ball with a fist travelling at 30 mph, afterwards the ball flies with 30 mph while you fist lost it's speed on impact. I see no problems there.

My mass is 60 kg. If I charge for a hit to a 6 kg ball and send it away with a speed of 60 km/h - this will result to sending me backwards with a speed of 6 km/h.

Why? Newtons law of action and reaction! You can't avoid it.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
My mass is 60 kg. If I charge for a hit to a 6 kg ball and send it away with a speed of 60 km/h - this will result to sending me backwards with a speed of 6 km/h.

Why? Newtons law of action and reaction! You can't avoid it.

The main point here is aside from the reaction of the body, the speed of the ball when it hits the walls causes such a fast rebound that there isn't much time for gravity or the lack of it to do its work. Obviously not quite true but I think the game would be pure action reaction and incidence/exit angles in zero gravity. It would be somewhat like that on the moon also. One of the interesting things I noticed from the images that came back from the Apollo flights was just watching the dirt kicked up by the astronauts when they walked about on the moon.
The dirt squirted out from the front of the boots and made a little parabolic flight but the time it took was a lot longer than the same action on earth. The moon hoaxers poo poo that evidence but there was no way for NASA to have made the time sequence of the astronaut walking in clearly normal time frame and the motion of the dirt in its little sub-orbital lazy curve. But it showed in a little experiment the effects of 1/6th of earth's gravity.

Originally posted by sonhouse
The main point here is aside from the reaction of the body, ... lazy curve. But it showed in a little experiment the effects of 1/6th of earth's gravity.

You are of course perfectly right.

In any sport on the moon surface, one have to take low grav into consideration. It is possible to take a match of table tennis, but it will be boringly slow, or else you will miss the table altogether. In zero grav table tennis it is impossible.

I would prefer a good sound game of chess in space. May I challenge you?