Astronaut to Run the Boston Marathon From Space 176
BostonBehindTheScenes writes "American astronaut Sunita Williams will run 26.2 miles on a treadmill on Patriot's Day (April 16th for those of you outside of Massachusetts) while runners on the ground will compete in the 111th Boston Marathon, according to this New Scientist article.
And yes, she is an actual registered participant who qualified by finishing among the top 100 women in the Houston Marathon in 2006. NASA's press release touts this as yet another space first."
Patriots' Day (Score:5, Informative)
We in Massachusetts have been observing this day long before a certain President co-opted the name to add a bit of jingo to the commemoration of a certain day in September.
Re:Is this really fair? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pork. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Is this really fair? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is this really fair? (Score:4, Informative)
At the same time though, in General Relativity a gravitational field is equivalent to an accelerating frame of reference (or something like that...), so the sum total gravitational effects experienced in the spacecraft's frame of reference is near zero.
It could be argued that "zero gravity" is misleading as it will help perpetuate the common myth that weightlessness is due to being beyond the Earth's gravity, rather than it being cancelled out due to the acceleration, but nonetheless, that's a term used to refer to it, and I think it's clear that the OP wasn't misunderstanding the differences.
I'd question that labelling it as "scientifically inaccurate" constitutes POV, especially when it is backed up only by one person, who is described as a journalist and historian, not a scientist.