Physics and Fitness Meld for Space Tourist, NFL Player

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Physics and Fitness Meld for Space Tourist, NFL Player
Eric Anderson, President and CEO of Space Adventures, bottom, listens as game developer Richard Garriott, son of former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott speaks to reporters during a news conference at The Explorers Club Wednesday, June 11, 2008 in New York. The company that sends wealthy tourists to the International Space Station says that Google co-founder Sergey Brin has paid $5 million to reserve a seat on a future flight. (Image credit: AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Richard Garriott, the next civilian to fly inspace, will be teaming up with Ken Harvey, former NFL player and four-time probowler, to create this activity that tries to involve students in space while gettingthem fit on Earth.

Space Sportilization is a series of fitnessactivities that students can do on Earth and then predict what similar moveswould look like in free fall on the ISS.

Harvey stated,"With this activity, that we call, Space Sportilization, we hope tocombine sports and space together to help students learn what scienceprinciples are at work when we play sports. Kids will help me work on a set offootball drills that we will give to Richard Garriott to practice as he travelsamong the stars."

Garriot will record a set of educationalvideos while in orbit to demonstrate the basic physics of movment in free fall;Harvey has recorded a similar set of videos to show how these same exerciseswork on Earth.

See the earlier article on sportsin space for a comparison of actual and science-fictional sports in spacereferences; see also this SpaceSportilization video. Via SpaceRef.

(This Science Fiction in the Newsstory used with permission of Technovelgy.com)

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Bill Christensen
Technovelgy Editor

Bill Christensen is the founder and editor of Technovelgy, a website dedicated to cataloguing  the inventions, technology and ideas of science fiction writers. Bill is a dedicated reader of science fiction with a passion about science and the history of ideas. For 10 years, he worked as writer creating technical documentation for large companies such as Ford, Unisys and Northern Telecom and currently works to found and maintain large websites. You can see Bill's latest project on Twitter.