Interplanetary Athletics, or Baseball on Mars

Real-life Tony Stark — Telsa and SpaceX founder Elon Musk — is in the news again on the merit of a recent and fascinating Aeon Magazine article. The article sums up some of Musk’s recent Mars ambitions, and by way of recap: His original call for an 80,000-person colony has expanded to a 1-million-person civilization. And in case we might suspect the idea is discovery-driven, we should know the emphasis actual orbits the concept of survival.

And, oddly enough, it makes some sense. What he’s saying is:

1. There are no other civilizations networked across the known galaxy;
2. so barring any unknown unknowns, there’s either no life by Earth life or all other single-planet civs died off;
3. so what the hell? Let’s build a second Earth in case we break this one a little earlier than expected.

And since every science fiction movie ever includes Earth either being destroyed or being wasted via pollution, then I’d say we pretty much need to make that Mars colony right now.

Anyway, what I’m establishing here is the very real idea that we, humans, may some day live on Mars or the Moon or something spectacular like that. And yes, according to Doctor Who, it’s all going to end with the minor characters killed by an alien virus, killed by each other, or both. I think we can all agree that will happen — eventually. But first, I think it’s important to note that out of 1,000,000 people, there’s bound to be enough people to start some baseball, football, and soccer leagues.

Let’s discuss.

What We Know

Science (read: a Google search) informs me that Mars does not have the same gravity as earth:

Thanks, Googs! But what is an “m/s²”? I don’t know.

But according to the powers of basic math, Mars has a gravity about 38% the strength of the good ol’ Terra’s tug. Mars, also, has a thin, but very real, atmosphere — unlike the moon, which is in a virtual vacuum. The Mars atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide (which means nothing to me), but more importantly has much less pressure than Earth’s atmosphere. This means much-less or practically-no wind resistance. Kicks on goal do not bend, curveballs do not curve, and footballs arrive in receiver’s gloves just as hard as they left the quarterback’s hands.

Here’s a Wikipedia NASA pic of the that thin atmosphere:

The thin, not-Earth-air atmosphere also means there is no air for breathing. That’s always considered a bummer, and it was the number one complaint of the Apollo astronauts upon reaching the moon, many of whom had hoped to remove their helmets and taste a scoop of that sweet lunar cheese, I’m told.

What We Expect

No air means if it’s outdoors, it’s got to be done in space suits. Terraforming is still a bajillion years away, but air-tight structures are old news. That means air-tight stadiums and gymnasiums are going to be the location of choice — except for golf. It’s too impractical to wander out into space with a cumbersome, fragile suit as the only thing between you and athletic glory — and also a terrifying, awful death.

I mean, you can try to do sports in space, but you’ll end up either dead or goofy looking, a la this weird YouTube video.

So, if we translate our sports into a dome or an underground gym or somesuch, what differences can we expect? Well, it’s going to be pressurized with oxygen and whatnot, so bending balls and air resistance is game on. So it breathing. But gravity is still wild and crazy. According to sports physicist Peter Brancazio, the effects are not quite what we might expect:

An understanding of how the game would change, begins with the difference between mass and weight. The former is a measurement of an object’s resistance to being accelerated; the latter measures the force of gravity on an object. Given equal air resistance on earth and in a lunar stadium, the mass — of a person, say, or a ball — remains constant; its weight on the moon, however, is one-sixth of its weight on earth.

So you couldn’t run any faster on the moon than you can here (you would have to develop a kind of low-lying, hopping stride, however, so you didn’t launch yourself into the air with every push off the ball of your foot); and you couldn’t throw a ball any faster, either.

‘The bat will feel lighter when you pick it up,’ Mr. Brancazio said, because it doesn’t weigh as much. ‘But swinging it’ — its mass doesn’t change — ‘isn’t any easier.’

I am reminded of a recent glitch in the Madden franchise:

IMAGINE A WORLD WHERE EVERYONE CAN FLY THAT HIGH! Or where the backspin on a baseball produces more thrust than the yawning gravity of the moon — resulting in insanity like this:

Brancazio also thinks basketball would be a no go because it would require a 60-foot-high rim, but that sounds kind of amazing to me. The point guard loses his dibble, and suddenly the ball is 20 feet in the air and everyone is jumping for it.

Size could be a problem. These are spectator sports. Having a baseball field with a 1000-foot outfield is impractical from both the engineering standpoint (what alternative use could a colony have for such a big asteroid target?) and from visibility standpoint. Not to mention you’d have to have a headset for the outfielders just to let them know the ball is coming their way.

But this things are solved easily enough when we consider what effect domes could have on play. Let’s say the average fly ball in baseball travels 600 feet. Well, make the domes 400 feet deep and change the rules on home runs — it can be caught for an out until it hits the grass. That makes ricochets fair game. (Call it the 2020 Rule.)

In basketball, the roof is out of bounds — same with football and soccer. No more field goals in football, but they’re kinda dumb anyway. Or, better yet, put an upper limit on the goal post, so instead of kicking into an open Y-shape, the target is like a capital A-shape (depending on the font) or a spatula outline.

It’s fun to dream about this stuff. Musk plans to send 100 colonists at a time, so it will take a long time for the stuffy, super-fit engineer types to die off so that us pudgy, comely sports innovators will be able to repurpose Warehouse B into a multipurpose sports arena. But when that day comes, I’ll be first in line.