A "Fun Module" on a station?

[KASASpace]

Actually, I just remembered something:

When playing a game that makes you think, IE CHESS, you actually get very much needed "brainercise" which helps a large amount to staying sane. So, YES.

At least to chess-esque games.

[Drunkrobot]

We could send them cheesy movies, the worst we can find. They'll have to sit and watch them all, and we'll monitor their minds.

[vger]

We could send them cheesy movies, the worst we can find. They'll have to sit and watch them all, and we'll monitor their minds.

Now that I think of it, I don't know how astronauts would feel about this, but I think heckling bad movies would actually be a pretty darned good way to boost morale on a long space journey. It's not only good for laughs, but it also encourages interaction in a non-competitive environment.

[Fr8monkey]

HA!

In real life... Go here!

[jfull]

We could send them cheesy movies, the worst we can find. They'll have to sit and watch them all, and we'll monitor their minds.

I know you're referencing Mystery Science Theater 3000, but for some reason this reminded me of "Movie Night" on the Enterprise in Star Trek Enterprise (the prequel series).

All they ever watched were really old public-domain films and the crew would talk about them like they were the best thing ever.

That actually has me wondering if, somehow, all copyrighted material from Earth was lost at some point in Star Trek's past.

[vger]

That actually has me wondering if, somehow, all copyrighted material from Earth was lost at some point in Star Trek's past.

Copyright is supposed to expire some 70 years after the IP's creation.

Unless you're Disney.

[jfull]

Copyright is supposed to expire some 70 years after the IP's creation.

Yeah, but it could have been something that happened at a date close to now.

I can totally imagine a Star Trek character mentioning "the Great Copyright Implosion of the early 21st century"

[vger]

Yeah, but it could have been something that happened at a date close to now.

I can totally imagine a Star Trek character mentioning "the Great Copyright Implosion of the early 21st century"

Well considering that society in Star Trek abandoned Capitalism at some point, both because of WWIII and because they just found something they liked better, I don't think anyone cared.

[rdfox]

The ISS has a fairly healthy supply of recreational materials on board that the crew can--and, indeed, is *expected* to use during their designated "rest" periods (as opposed to "sleep" periods, when they're expected to actually be, y'know, SLEEPING). This includes the infamous guitar (which, IIRC, also had flown on Mir, was brought back down on one of the last flights home from Mir, and then sent up to the ISS on one of the early resupply missions), an electronic keyboard, some recreational software on the laptops (plus any personal laptops/tablets that the crews bring with them), and a DVD player with a fairly healthy library of movies, TV shows, and some sports events, with a TV display in the designated dining area (which is also the common "rec room" area) so that the crew can watch DVDs as a group. (No Blu-Ray player yet, and not likely to be one, since IIRC, the TV is a standard NTSC set instead of high-def.) Additionally, there have been some special TV broadcasts to the ISS, specifically for the benefit of the crew. I believe the Super Bowl is sent up live every year (with the US television feed, so that those who aren't football fans can enjoy the commercials), and I know that Marvel/Disney made special arrangements with NASA after Avengers debuted so amazingly hot to transmit it up to the ISS on a Sunday afternoon or evening (Sunday is a "rest day" where the only duties for the crew are routine housekeeping stuff and they're allowed to decompress after a six-day workweek) about a week after its US theatrical release, so that the crew that had been up for only about 30 days at that point wouldn't have to wait another two months to get to see such a hotly anticipated movie. (It was NASA that made the initial request!) This is, of course, in addition to the Cupola module, which, while officially justified as a post for commanding EVAs and RMS operations, was also specifically and officially identified as a place for the crew to be able to get away from each other and do recreational Earthgazing.

This heavy emphasis on recreational facilities is, at least on the NASA side (not sure on the RSA side, though their experience with the Salyut series and Mir would almost certainly have parallels), due to experience with Skylab, where, as was typical, NASA planned the missions to pack as much work into the available flight time as possible--working 16 hours a day, seven days a week, no days off, minimal breaks, running a million miles an hour the whole time you're on the clock, and expected to just drop off instantly when your sleep period starts, and then instantly snap completely awake at the end of the sleep period and get straight to work. While people can live that sort of schedule for a short period of time and be productive, once you get beyond about two weeks of that, you start getting severe burnout, productivity falls off, people start making mistakes, and stress levels start to make people very unhappy indeed. (The US Navy may have seven-day workweeks at sea, but even there, they do, at worst, "port and starboard" watches, twelve hours on and twelve hours off, where you at least have SOME time to rest and decompress after your shift, and to wake up and get functional before the next one.)

The net result of that schedule was that the third (last) Skylab crew actually revolted against mission control during their 93-day flight; about halfway through it, the stress got to the point that they simply decided amongst themselves that they would take a day off, and simply sent a flat transmission to that effect down to the flight controllers, then shut off their voice radios for 24 hours. (They left the telemetry radios and biomedical monitor radios on, so that the ground would know that they were still alive and not in trouble, though.) They then proceeded to spend the day doing nothing of value beyond the mandatory housekeeping chores (like, for example, changing lithium hydroxide canisters). The ground did realize why this happened and reshuffled the flight plan to give them a bit more time to decompress for the remainder of the mission, but it still resulted in all three men being "blackballed" from the flight roster for the insubordination. However, it also sharply pointed out to NASA that they needed to re-examine their concept of crew management for long-duration spaceflights.

What does this all add up to? Well, my suspicion is that any manned Mars mission will have a similar sort of recreational facilities. The physically-present purely recreational items will probably be things like a guitar and a keyboard, and maybe something akin to a Wii or Kinect or other game console with motion-capture capability, though the last is questionable. There will certainly be some sort of video media player (whether it's disc-based or based on computer video files is open to debate, though a computer-based one could certainly be updated with new videos during sleep periods, which would be valuable on a two-year mission) with a relatively large display for communal viewing; I suspect that there would also be a wi-fi link that would allow the crew to watch videos from that player on personal tablets or laptops so that they could watch videos privately, too. (Be they video messages from their family, or just a case of something they like watching that the rest of the crew can't stand.) Any game console would also likely use the same large display, but I suspect that personal gaming devices (think a 3DS or other handheld) that can network with each other would be more likely, simply because they would allow for use of the video player while people are gaming; these might well be integrated into the tablet/laptops to save mass and volume. If it was felt that a "tabletop" game experience was necessary (i.e., for board games) instead of using virtual ones on screens, it would likely either be in the form of magnetized "travel" games as mentioned above, or in the form of "virtual" versions using a holographic display, which would have the advantage of allowing a much larger game collection and no loose pieces to get sucked into the ventilation system filters or otherwise lost. This could even be combined with a motion-capture system to allow the crew to move pieces and even roll dice without resorting to control buttons; if it was felt necessary, it could probably be built into the "dining room table" that the crew would gather around for meals, saving on volume by making the table as dual-purpose as real ones are for tabletop gamers.

That said, I don't expect there to be any place for the crew to engage in large-scale physical recreation, unless you count running on the treadmill or riding the exercise bike as "recreational." The volume required is just excessive, and even in zero-G, the risk of serious injury is too great. (Besides, much of the attraction of ball-type sports is judging the arc needed to throw the ball where you want it to go; during the coast phase of flight, that'd be horribly boring for the crew, since there's no actual arc, you just push the ball in the direction you want it to go. That said, I could totally see someone smuggling a Nerf mini-football on board to toss around for the cameras during an EVA on the surface of Mars...)

[Tex]

Dat reply.

[Javster]

It's definitely needed. It would be cool if they were given early access to big video game releases

[Drunkrobot]

Don't send them Gravity, whatever you do. Actually, scratch that, FORCE THEM ON PAIN OF DEATH to watch Gravity.

[R0cketC0der]

Don't send them Gravity, whatever you do. Actually, scratch that, FORCE THEM ON PAIN OF DEATH to watch Gravity.

Why? They would probably just complain about how unrealistic it is(although I have read that some astronauts actually liked gravity...)

[Drunkrobot]

Why? They would probably just complain about how unrealistic it is(although I have read that some astronauts actually liked gravity...)

I'm referring to how it would be like watching 'Jaws' while on a dingy off the Australian coast. "What's the absolute worst thing that could happen?"

Just to mess with the astronaut's heads. What can I say, I'm a sadist.

[vger]

Why? They would probably just complain about how unrealistic it is(although I have read that some astronauts actually liked gravity...)

Still have to get around to seeing it, but I doubt there's anyway it could make me cringe as much as Armageddon.

[cantab]

Armageddon, pffft. Try The Core.

[Everten P.]

Make a room full of automatic tennis ball launchers and make it a gauntlet

[ScallopPotato]

What if astronauts brought along bicycles on surface moon or mars mission? EVA bicycles anyone?

[Aghanim]

If this is possible: A smaller version or even full scale version of The Ender's Game zero G training room

Some ball game or even nerf war would probably work there