Why hold gymnastics events on the moon?

THAT'S THE WHY:THIS SUMMER we saw plenty of feats of human performance in London at the Olympics. Meanwhile, Nasa managed to safely land the rover Curiosity on Mars. So what might happen if you combined space travel and sports and hosted the Olympic Games away from Earth?

In a blog post for Scientific American, astrobiologist, physician and science writer David Warmflash set his sights on how gymnastic events might play out on the Moon, where pressurised, radiation-shielded habitats could host events at around one-sixth the gravity of Earth.

“Arriving on the Moon, lunar tourists would enjoy strength to body weight ratios roughly six times what they experience on Earth, assuming they have not deconditioned by spending several weeks in weightlessness prior to arrival,” he writes.

“This would have a profound impact on those gymnastics apparatus that are dominated by pushing and pulling – pommel horse, parallel bars, high bar, and still rings for men, and uneven bars for women.”

In low gravity, gymnasts could potentially carry out feats like release moves from rings and they could add more somersaults and twists before landing, notes Warmflash. Although running and dismounts in events such as floor exercise, vault or balance beam could prove a little tricky in the low-gravity environment, he adds.

But with challenge comes invention, and he rounds off the thought experiment by speculating that “ . . . the change in gravitational environment that makes things more difficult potentially can lead to amazing innovations – both in skills and apparatus – that we cannot begin to imagine”.

You can read the blog post on the Scientific American website at blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/08/14/low-gravity-olympics-how-would-gymnastics-look-in-a-future-lunar-colony/