• Question: Could you play football on Mars

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      Asked by 266merf39 to Angus, Jenni, Melissa on 23 Jun 2016.
      • Photo: Melissa Ladyman

        Melissa Ladyman answered on 23 Jun 2016:

        Well I think it would be difficult because of several factors: lower gravity, less atmosphere, not enough oxygen and no grass.

        The gravity might not be too much of a problem. You’d be lighter, and you’d be able to jump further and the football would certainly travel further- that’s if you can kick and throw with the same force as you do on Earth. You might need to have a bigger pitch. Gravity on Mars is about one third of what it is on Earth so you would weigh much less.

        What about that atmosphere though? Can you imagine playing football in a spacesuit? They don’t look very flexible, and I don’t think you could run very fast! Maybe we could build a dome with an Earth like atmosphere that we could play inside?

        I think we could probably bring some fake grass with us!

      • Photo: Angus Cook

        Angus Cook answered on 23 Jun 2016:

        The main problem we’d have is getting there, but once that’s out the way then yes, I think you could 🙂

        It’d be a bit different to playing on the Earth though.

        1) Sports kit:
        Mars doesn’t have a breathable atmosphere for us. It’s mainly carbon dioxide (which is poisonous to us), but it’s also much thinner than our own atmosphere (i.e. there’s not much gas actually around) so you’d very quickly (and very permanently!) be out of breath. Not to mention the temperature is usually really quite chilly, varying between -125 and 20 degrees C.
        So part of your sports kit would need to be:
        Air tank, clear helmet (for good visibility) pressurised suit, insulated suit, thermostat, integrated Lucozade straw (because you’re going to get thirsty, and you can’t exactly take off your helmet to drink*).

        2) Ball
        We’ve had to think about how we’re going to adapt our sports kit for the martian environment, but the ball will have to change too. If you brought a regular ball to Mars it’d probably freeze, and shatter when you kicked it, or pop due to the pressure change. Or both…
        The pressure difference isn’t too much of an issue, we can just inflate it when we get there. The temperature change might be more of a problem, but one of the concepts for Martian habitats is to use a special type of canvas to make big tents to live in. I think that might work for the ball too.

        3) Pitch
        Another thing to think about it how big the pitch needs to be. Firstly the gravity on Mars is about 1/3 as strong as it is on Earth. Also the thinner atmosphere means that there’s less air resistance against things flying through the air. This means that you can probably kick a football MUCH further and higher than you could on Earth, so you probably need the pitch to be much bigger too (imagine trying to play 11-a-side football on Earth in a space the size of a tennis court). There are plenty of rocks about to pile together as goal posts, but again as the gravity is lower your goalie can jump much higher (so the question really is ‘How hiiiigh do you want the goal?)!

        So I think it’s certainly feasible! Also developing the the technology to play football on Mars might lead to breakthroughs in other areas (flexible environmental suit is certainly handy!)

        *Whatever you drink it going to have to be kept warm and pressurised too. Otherwise it will either evaporate away (low pressure) or freeze like a lolly (low temperature).

      • Photo: Jenni Rodd

        Jenni Rodd answered on 23 Jun 2016:

        I think the interesting question is “why would you want to?” 🙂
        Getting to mars is massively difficult. And setting up a living environment in which we can stay alive and healthy will be equally difficult. So having spent all that time and effort achieving this, why would we ‘waste’ our time playing football. But actually we know from lots of studies of people living in strange environments away from friends and family that leisure activities is massively important to people ability to stay well and happy and to do their jobs. So I think that when we do eventually get to mars it is really important to figure out ways of letting the astronauts do things like play football.

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