Athletics Records on the Moon

wogoga

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Let us assume a huge sports hall on the moon with terrestrial air inside. How would athletics records differ from corresponding records on Earth?

In case of long jump, triple jump, hammer throw and javelin throw, reasonable first guesses can be made by simply multiplying terrestrial records by factor six, due to the fact that lunar gravity is only 1/6 = 17% of terrestrial gravity (i.e. 83% weightlessness with respect to gravity on Earth).

Thus as "lunar athletics records" we roughly get:
  • Long jump: 50 m
  • Triple jump: 110 m
  • Hammer throw: 500 m
  • Javelin throw: 600 m
A reasonable first guess for high jump is more difficult. In case of pole vault I would assume that jumps up to a height of around 30 m should be possible with corresponding long and flexible poles.

Does somebody know how to make reasonable guesses for sprint races?

Cheers, Wolfgang
 
Sprints would likely be slower, due to reduced friction forces.
That would also reduce the length of the jumps. Although they would be greater than on Earth, a 6X across-the-board is probably not correct...
 
I think the javelin throw might be much further, assuming it is thrown in a vacuum. No air friction.
No idea how much this will affect the hammer throw, but my gut feeling says less.
 
Positing Earthly atmosphere & Lunar gravity, pole vaulting would be quite spectacular.
 
So far, only Americans have received the inevitable "participation ribbon." Who do y'all think is next? Russia, China and India have the next-most developed space programs behind ours. I think it will be India.
 
rwguinn said:
Sprints would likely be slower, due to reduced friction forces.
That would also reduce the length of the jumps. Although they would be greater than on Earth, a 6X across-the-board is probably not correct...
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Yeah, this would affect most of the track and field events in an unexpected fashion. Even the throwing events build up a portion of the initial throwing speed via a short run-up or spin-up to the launch point.

You'd also have to consider the factor of stopping for those throwing sports. Stepping over the line usually counts as a fault, and stopping would be harder in lower gravity. Mis-time your steps, and you could still be in mid-air at the wrong time, causing a fault.
 
Where on Earth could you train for something like that?

I'd love to see the synchronized high-high-high diving event.
 
For simple trajectories simply substitute 1.63 m/s 2 for 9.8 in the equations for a given horizontal velocity, and elevation angle at release.

How far the object, javalin, shot put etc. goes is directly related to the time of flight and horizontal velocity.
Initial vertical velocity will give the time to top of arc, and return can be set to the same value.

Let's sat 10m/s horz and 10m/s vertical. Time to top of arc.

On Earth 0=10-9.8 (t)
t=10/9.8
On the Moon 0=10-1.63 (t)
t=10/1.63
Yes, 6 times that on Earth. Therefore it will travel 6 times as long at 10 m/s horizontal velocity therefore go 6 times further.
 
Jrrarglblarg said:
Sub-orbital trampoline. Long distance lacrosse. Tactical ping pong.
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Unless I miss my guess....
if the object of a contest is to throw something upwards, rather than a long horizontal distance, things change.
d=0.5a (t)2The time to top of arc increased by 6. The height at top of arc would be 36 times that on Earth.

Standing high jump would be a new sport.
 
What about archery and shooting events? I imagine the flights of the arrows and projectiles would be much different, or maybe not. I have no clue.
 
fuelair said:
That's why our air in the sealed arena!!!:)
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I understand that. But we still get the occasional moonbat who thinks an Apollo astronaut should have been demonstrating amazing feats of agility and acrobatics because they were in 1/6th gravity. Never mind that the bulky spacesuit restricted movement and they wanted to avoid falling.
 
alfaniner said:
Where on Earth could you train for something like that?
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Well, you just couldn't. Training would have to be done on the Moon. Some events would require fundamentally different technique from what we see on Earth. For example, I was thinking further about this:


Horatius said:
You'd also have to consider the factor of stopping for those throwing sports. Stepping over the line usually counts as a fault, and stopping would be harder in lower gravity. Mis-time your steps, and you could still be in mid-air at the wrong time, causing a fault.
Click to expand...


I used to throw javelin in high school, so that's what I was thinking about. You'd need to be able to get up to top running speed in a short distance, throw, and then stop. Running and stopping would be harder, due to lower friction, and longer hang time if you're sprinting like we do on Earth.

So I was thinking, maybe we could run using a "skating" motion, keep you body tilted farther forward than a traditional run, and push off with more side-to-side action, which would tend to make you move up less than a traditional running motion. But then you'd have to figure out how to transition to a posture that allows the throw. Stopping would end up being more like sliding face-first into a base in baseball - stay low so you don't waste time in the air, and use the whole surface of your body to stop, rather than just your feet.

It would look almost completely unlike an Earth-based javelin throw, and as I said above, probably couldn't be trained here on Earth. You might be able to do some of the individual motions, but putting it all together would require the lower gravity.



jaydeehess said:
Standing high jump would be a new sport.
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Don't the basketball guys already have vertical leap contests?
 
jaydeehess said:
Unless I miss my guess....
if the object of a contest is to throw something upwards, rather than a long horizontal distance, things change.
d=0.5a (t)2The time to top of arc increased by 6. The height at top of arc would be 36 times that on Earth.

Standing high jump would be a new sport.
Click to expand...

No: t goes up by a factor of 6 but a goes down by the same factor, so the height would be 6 times. (Which you can also see more easily by considering energy.)
 
One thing you have all overlooked is that if you have the events inside the dome the air pressure may be different. It could be 100% oxygen and no nitrogen. That means air resistance would be a lot less.
 
rjh01 said:
One thing you have all overlooked is that if you have the events inside the dome the air pressure may be different. It could be 100% oxygen and no nitrogen. That means air resistance would be a lot less.
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Unlikely scenario. Google "Apollo 1"
 
Jrrarglblarg said:
Unlikely scenario. Google "Apollo 1"
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The total air pressure would be 20% of earth's air pressure at sea level. In Apollo 1 air pressure was 100% and 100% oxygen. This means that the fire risk is the same as on Earth. Yet air resistance would be a lot less.

Sorry I did not specify the air pressure. I thought that would be obvious.

Edit. In fact I did specify a different air pressure in my original post.
 
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Traction force before slipping will be lower so will reduce acceleration on sprint starts, jumps, throwing events. Wouldn't the fact that while running, when you have both feet off the ground your downward acceleration is lower so you'd have less time with contact with the ground to propel youself forward?
 
FenerFan said:
What about archery and shooting events? I imagine the flights of the arrows and projectiles would be much different, or maybe not. I have no clue.
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Arrows wouldn't work in a vacuum, unless you developed a rifled bow (à la 'Robin Hood FRS').
 
catsmate said:
Arrows wouldn't work in a vacuum, unless you developed a rifled bow (à la 'Robin Hood FRS').
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What would happen to them? I imagine you're saying they'd be very inaccurate, which makes sense. But not that they wouldn't shoot.
 
Roboramma said:
What would happen to them? I imagine you're saying they'd be very inaccurate, which makes sense. But not that they wouldn't shoot.
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Oh they'd shoot, just not very well. Arrows, quarrels, darts et cetera are drag-stabilised and require an atmosphere to function. The arrow would rapidly destabilise and start tumbling end-over-end.

The fletchings (the feather bits at the back of an arrow to non-archers :)) cause drag which opposes movement of the arrow from it's line of flight. They may (but aren't always) angled to cause a slight, slow, spin in the arrow creating gyroscopic stability also. When fired an arrow flexes, due to bending and compression by the firing, which the fletchings compensate for; without their contribution the arrow would begin to rotate on it's long axis.
 
rjh01 said:
The total air pressure would be 20% of earth's air pressure at sea level. In Apollo 1 air pressure was 100% and 100% oxygen. This means that the fire risk is the same as on Earth. Yet air resistance would be a lot less.

Sorry I did not specify the air pressure. I thought that would be obvious.

Edit. In fact I did specify a different air pressure in my original post.
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If air presure was 20% that of Earth sea level the contestents would not be running and jumping. They'd be gasping for air. The summit of Mt. Everest is about 33% the air pressure of sea level.
The dome is a sealed container. The air pressure can be whatever you want it to be.
And no, Apollo's 100% oxygen level meant there was 5 times as much oxygen per litre of atmosphere in the capsule than on Earth and thus fires could burn fuel 5 times faster, thus release as much heat 5 times faster, and spread faster than on Earth.

Normal Earth sea level atmosphere is about 20% oxygen and near 80% nitrogen.
 
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jaydeehess said:
If air presure was 20% that of Earth sea level the contestents would not be running and jumping. They'd be gasping for air. The summit of Mt. Everest is about 33% the air pressure of sea level.
The dome is a sealed container. The air pressure can be whatever you want it to be.
And no, Apollo's 100% oxygen level meant there was 5 times as much oxygen per litre of atmosphere in the capsule than on Earth and thus fires could burn fuel 5 times faster, thus release as much heat 5 times faster, and spread faster than on Earth.

Normal Earth sea level atmosphere is about 20% oxygen and near 80% nitrogen.
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The partial pressure of oxygen in earth atmosphere at 15psi is something like 4.5psi. Been awhile since I've had to wikibash a moonbat so I don't remember the exact figures and I'm rounding, but it's in that neighborhood. So the Apollo vehicles were designed to contain a full-oxygen environment at 4-5 psi above ambient, in this case vacuum of space. For reasons best discussed elsewhere, NASA engineers ran the first "plugs out" test of the vehicle, meaning disconnected from all external supply, with pure oxygen at 15psi.

At that fuel-air ratio Velcro (high surface area per weigh) became almost a low explosive. A "rich" burn has high fuel per unit of air, a "lean" burn has low fuel per unit of air. Burning rich is cooler than burning lean, because unburned fuel carries away both reaction heat and unreleased chemical energy, where lean combustion releases ALL the chemical heat from a fuel. With sea-level pressure pure oxygen, it was a very lean burn environment.
 
jaydeehess said:
If air presure was 20% that of Earth sea level the contestents would not be running and jumping. They'd be gasping for air. The summit of Mt. Everest is about 33% the air pressure of sea level.
The dome is a sealed container. The air pressure can be whatever you want it to be.
And no, Apollo's 100% oxygen level meant there was 5 times as much oxygen per litre of atmosphere in the capsule than on Earth and thus fires could burn fuel 5 times faster, thus release as much heat 5 times faster, and spread faster than on Earth.

Normal Earth sea level atmosphere is about 20% oxygen and near 80% nitrogen.
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Again your post is rubbish. The Earth's atmosphere is 20% oxygen. On the moon you would have the same partial pressure of oxygen as Earth, the difference is that there would not be the nitrogen in the atmosphere. So 100% oxygen. Total air pressure of 20% of Earth's.

Even your bit about Apollo is wrong. The fire STARTED partly because it was 1 full atmosphere of pressure of oxygen. Some wires were hot and in contact with something that could burn. This would not normally pose a problem, but with the extra oxygen it burned.
 
Yes. The fire conditions aboard Apollo1 did not accurately replicate the conditions the craft would experience in use, a low-pressure pure oxygen environment.

I was being flippant and incorrect when referring upthread to Apollo1, forgetting how few around here anymore know the deeper details of both the event and the environmental conditions around it.

On the moon they might use pure oxygen, but not likely. It's less robust for a habitat in ways we could discuss elsewhere. More likely, they'll use full sea level pressure because it's better at pushing all the vacuum out of the dome and onto the searing radiation hell of the lunar deathscape.
 
Assuming earth-like atmosphere with lunar gravity, for the throwing events they would most likely change the implements otherwise the area needed for the competition would be enormous. Back in the 1980's they redesigned the javelin, one of the reasons was the they were throwing too far 100M+ and stadiums were not big enough if the throws got much longer. For the shot put, they might from from 16 lbs to 100 lbs.

For the jumping events, the length of the pole could be unwieldy for the vaulter to lift and run with.

Also all the events depend on speed as well as power. Can a similar velocity be achieved on the moon?
 
The astronauts all discovered a loping, hopping gait that maximized traction on push off for further travel per step. I think earth-type running would not be used.
 
Have you seen the Mythbusters episode on the topic? Adam gets to try the loping hop in the Vomit Comet, and reported it was every bit as natural and effective in that gravity as walking normally is normally.
 
Jrrarglblarg said:
I was being flippant and incorrect when referring upthread to Apollo1, forgetting how few around here anymore know the deeper details of both the event and the environmental conditions around it.

On the moon they might use pure oxygen, but not likely. It's less robust for a habitat in ways we could discuss elsewhere. More likely, they'll use full sea level pressure because it's better at pushing all the vacuum out of the dome and onto the searing radiation hell of the lunar deathscape.
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Searing the hell out of a ejected vaccum..........
Hey, don't go apolgizing for being flippant, then go all flippant again in the next paragraph.

It confuses some of us.

Of course everyone knows that increasing the air pressure will increase the gravity in the dome too. ;)
 
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