“Mars Hubble” by NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA). Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
This is not the place for a debate on space (one of my friends has a new project where that would be more appropriate), so let’s start with the assumption that Mars is the most likely place for a future human colony. In this first article I want to discuss international competitions and how (human) Martians might compete. I will follow up with Part 2, where I will discuss how travel improvements could change the games and Part 3, where I will discuss the physics of training and training facilities. While there are international competitions in every sport, I am going to focus on the FIFA World Cup with occasional commentary about IOC Olympic sports. I’m open to writing about specific sports or addressing different aspects. Just let me know!
Countries
My suspicion is that eventually some sort of treaty like the one that covers Antarctica will cover Mars, but the people that do research on Antarctica all have a country. They aren’t Antarcticans. You can see a colony wanting independence, but that will take time. It seems like the most likely scenario would be for them to play as Martians as Puerto Ricans play as Puerto Ricans. It’s also possible different colonies will operate differently. By way of comparison with Puerto Rico, players from Guadeloupe are eligible to play for France. The French-type situation would require either moving permanently or massive progress in travel.
Qualifying
This is going to depend on how the countries work out. It seems unlikely anything but qualifying from Mars would be possible.
Could these games be played somewhere in between?
The short answer is no. These are huge events that will require things like hotels. While we may eventually have outposts on asteroids that are treated like islands, archipelagos don’t tend to host major tournaments. When Indonesia hosted the 2007 Asian Cup, it did so with Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. We don’t gain a ton by having the games on any of the moons and it seems more likely we’ll colonize Mars before the Moon since Mars has an atmosphere, and the Moon basically does not. Again Mars has water, while the Moon basically does not.
Could athletes travel on cargo ships?
Technically, this is travel, but I don’t think this requires too much technology we don’t already have. There is just no reason for investing in a massive ship. To be clear, I am not thinking about these ships actually landing on Earth and Mars. Rather, they would stay in orbit, and individuals would debark.
If we have massive city-sized ships going back and forth between the two planets, athletes could train on those. For this to be realistic for 4-year tournaments, they essentially need to be full-time residents of the ship. I suppose the crew of the ship will need some entertainment, but space will be at a premium. We did invent scheduling systems long ago. The kids would just need to use the same field as the professionals. Of course, would virtual reality and just regular gym equipment be a better use of space for exercise? It probably is and the first ships that go between the two planets will not be luxury machines. However, I see no reason why eventually there couldn’t be a field.
This presents even more problems about countries, but I choose not to address those now.
Athletic Virtual Reality/E-Sports
Athletic virtual reality is not going to work without controlled environments. It takes light 3 minutes to go from Mars to Earth, so holodeck type stuff is not going to work. Turn-based competitions could work, whether athletic or otherwise. Archery would work. Curling could work (though it would need more than a controlled environment). Bowling could work.
E-sports would be the obvious way to deal with the distance, except we still have the problem that it takes light 3 minutes. Of course, e-sports have the benefit that the environment is controlled.
Stick this one in the time capsule. Maybe we’ll get to open it up while we’re still alive, though I’m not optimistic.
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