We recently received a very original and special email from David Saint-Jacques, a Canadian astronaut from NASA, currently on mission in the International Space Station.
David is a board game addict, and plays from time to time on BGA. He usually plays here Jaipur, Carcassonne and sometimes Puerto Rico. The extraordinary fact is that he also plays online directly from orbit!
Believe it or not, but the astronauts in the ISS have an Internet connexion available. It is slow, but it is functional, and apparently it is good enough to play on BGA! During one of his (few) free time slot, David played a game and probably became the first person to ever play on BGA from Space, and maybe the first person to ever play board games from Space. It's a small step for (a) man, but a giant leap for a Meeple!
But David's message is going way further: it seems that NASA is looking for new activities for astronauts, in order to stimulate their cerebral capacities while improving the ambience between teammates. Board games is of course their first choice ... except that without gravity this is really hard to manipulate boards, cards and dice... This is why NASA is thinking about using online boardgaming platform "officially" during its long-term missions.
Following this, before the end of this year, we are going to organize on BGA a big contest to select a dozen of candidates for a future job of "Board games instructor" (these are the words from the Agency). The Job Of Your Dreams: you will organise board game sessions for the astronaut crews - on Earth of course, but why not in Space at some point in the future?
Get ready to launch!
UPDATE April 2nd: April's fool! Thank you everyone for your nice comments 🙂
与BGA一起前往星辰大海!
我们最近收到了来自NASA的加拿大航天员 David Saint-Jacques 的一封创意十足又意义非凡的电子邮件,他目前正在国际空间站执行任务。
David 是个桌游重度粉丝,经常在 BGA 上玩游戏。
他通常在这里玩斋浦尔、卡卡颂,有时还会玩波多黎各。
非同寻常之处在于,他也直接从空间站上联机玩游戏!
信不信由你,国际空间站的航天员也可以上网。
虽然网速慢,但好歹能用,至少玩BGA绰绰有余!
David 在他少有的一次空闲时间里玩了一场游戏,这可能让他成为了首位在太空玩 BGA 的人,同时也可能是第一个在太空玩桌游的人。
这是人类的一小步,却是米宝的一大步!
但 David 还带来更多消息:似乎美国国家航空航天局正在为航天员寻找新的活动,以刺激他们的大脑,同时改善组员之间的气氛。
桌游当然是他们的首选....
只不过没有重力,摆弄板块、卡片和骰子是个大麻烦...
这就是美国国家航空航天局考虑在长期航天任务中「正式」使用在线桌游平台的原因。
接下来,在今年年底之前,我们将在 BGA 上组织一场大型比赛,为未来的「桌游教练」(总署是这么说的)职位挑选十几个候选人。
这是你梦想中的工作:为航天员组织桌游训练—当然是在地球上—但为何未来某一天不能在太空上呢?
准备发射!
更新 4月2日:愚人节快乐!
谢谢大家的好评