This illustration of "zero-gravity football" appears in the 1981 book School, Work and Play (World of Tomorrow).
Zero-gravity football is a great sport, but it can only be played in a space colony or a space station, where there are zones in which everything is weightless. The players zoom through the air, powered by small motors in their backpacks. Laser lines mark out the field.
See also:
"Grasshopper" Golf Cart (1961)
Sport in Space Colonies (1977)
Olympic Games on the Moon in 2020 (1979)
Future Without Football (Daily Review, 1976)
Lunar High Jump (1979)
This sports never happened!? Damned, I play it everytime I run the milky way with my friends.
ReplyDeleteGiven they've moved into a 3D environment, you would expect the padding to have moved away from the shoulder/upper body concentration necessary on Earth.
ReplyDeleteI'm filing this in the simple-extrapolation-with-a-certain-lack-of-foresight box.
Like when they used computer punchcards in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Good point, Matt! Though, if the jetpacks allow for head-first, Superman-style flight as I would assume they would, that's /exactly/ where you'd want padding.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to my name ^^, I know that it's the wrong sort of football but I just couldn't resist...
How about that notion described in the text of video games played as stadium spectator sports, with holographic displays? (It's always free-floating midair holograms when you're in The Future!)
ReplyDeleteThat seems like something of a failure of imagination, too. Today, that crowd of thousands is more likely to be participating in the game itself, while sitting at home...
Why would they assume there would be six goals just because a cube has six sides? Today's two-dimensional football field has four sides, and yet somehow we've managed not to have four goalposts. Shocking!
ReplyDeleteThis idea wasn't thought out very well. I mean, how would you tackle somebody in zero gravity anyway?
ReplyDeleteThe comic "2000 AD" thought of this in the mid 70s. OK, so it wasn't zero-g but everything else was pretty much the same.
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