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 🙂
與 BGA 一起前往星際!
我們最近收到了一封來自美國太空總署的加拿大太空人 David Saint-Jacques 的非常新奇和特別的電子郵件,他目前正在國際太空站執行任務。
David 是個桌上遊戲癮君子,不時在 BGA 上遊玩。
他通常在這裡遊玩齋浦爾、卡卡頌,有時還會遊玩波多黎各。
特別的事是,他也直接從衛星上連線遊玩!
信不信由你,但國際太空站的宇航員有一個網際網路連接可用。
雖然數據傳輸速度慢,但仍能用,且顯然對遊玩 BGA 來說已經足夠好了!
David 在一次他少有的空閒時間裡,玩了一場遊戲,這可能讓他成為了首名在太空遊玩 BGA 的人,同時也可能是第一個在太空玩桌遊的人。
這是人類的一小步,卻是米寶的一大步!
而 David 的消息則更進一步:看來 NASA 正在為太空人尋找新的活動,以刺激他們的大腦,同時改善組員之間的氣氛。
桌上遊戲當然是他們的首選....
只不過沒有重力,真的是很難去設置板塊,卡片和骰子...
因此 NASA 考慮在長期太空任務中「正式」使用線上桌遊平台。
接下來,在今年年底之前,我們將在 BGA 上組織一場大型比賽,挑選十幾個人成為「桌遊教練」(總署是這麼說的)。
你夢想中的工作:為太空人籌劃桌上遊戲訓練—當然是在地球上—但為何未來某一天不能在太空呢?
準備發射!
4月2日更新:愚人節快樂!
謝謝大家友善的評論