Play, for All (Hu)mankind: Peeling Out Where No One Had Peeled Out Before
Astronauts find play essential to maintaining their well-being.
Posted April 9, 2026 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk
Amidst chaos back on their home planet, three American astronauts and one Canadian aboard the Artemis II moonflight received a congratulatory phone call from the U.S. president. As his conversation strayed into a digression about hockey Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky, whom he called a “great friend,” eyeballs drifted away from the pro-forma remarks to the microphone itself as the object floated and then floated some more during a long minute of silence, an apparent technical glitch.
Waiting for the conversation to resume, the astronauts toyed with the mike.
Of course, the mike didn’t drop the way it would have if released by a celebrating stand-up comedian. Instead, the astronauts let it swim, twirled it, poked it, and steadied it improbably in free-fall, delighting in its zero-gravity wandering, juggling in slo-mo. Mission Specialist Christina Koch seemed especially close to failing to hold in a laugh.
Lost in Play in Space
A similar buoyancy erupted more than half a century earlier when two Apollo 17 astronauts, weighing one-sixth what they would on Earth and hopping about, joined in a goofy parody of an old song: “I was strolling on the moon one day, in the merry merry month of May…” The voice from Houston cut in with a correction: "Sorry about that, guys, but today may be December.”
In other words, fun’s over, the world is listening, back to business, back to science, back to the mission.
But play is hard to tamp down, and exuberance breaks through even for busy spacefarers carrying the hopes of humanity.
Another example, though premeditated, arose during Apollo 14. Before take off, mission commander Alan Shepard had concealed two golf balls in his space suit. He also smuggled aboard the head of a six iron. Once on the moon’s surface, he refashioned a moonrock-collecting scoop as a golf club and swung away in the most far-flung sand trap. Small spheres sailed off in the vacuum on a flat, mischievous trajectory. (History pencils in no hole-in-one for this prank, but with no lack of tiny craters nearby, it’s not a wild bet.)
And we recall action sequences of Apollo 15, 16, and 17 astronauts joyously bombing around the regolith in a battery-powered Lunar Roving Vehicle, the dune buggy boldly peeling out where no men had peeled out before.
All Work and No Play?
In an article in the American Journal of Play , Marianthi Liapi and Edith Ackerman, experts in learning environments, advocated for ways to fold play in among the insistent routines of space exploration and experimentation. Spacefarers would need to battle boredom , ease the effects of isolation, and compensate for the sensory deprivation that prolonged weightlessness imposed in cramped quarters. Like earthbound children and adults confined by regimen and expectation, astronauts risked overscheduling and understimulation.
How Do You Spell Relief in Space? P-L-A-Y
Without planned occasions for release, “creative performances”, or art projects, the authors wrote, astronauts would be play-deprived, and thus, their well-being and mental resilience would suffer. In their words, “Play is an experience of pure communication and freedom,” and so provides a shield from “psychological and physical hazards.” Weight constraints loosened for the roomier International Space Station, allowing crew members to bring guitars and bongos and even a saxophone to recharge with harmony and rhythm.
The human factor bears down heavily in orbit, but the weightless environment itself affords astronauts playful transport that only the likes of dolphins and chickadees can enjoy planet-side. During the 2024 Paris Games, the ISS crew staged their own “space Olympics.” Tracy Dyson power-lifted two crewmates. Mike Barratt improvised a discus, and according to the NASA report, “gave it his all.” Jeanette Epps, a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering, picked the long jump for her event and “went for the gold.” While artistic swimming hangs on in the terrestrial Olympics, “synchronized floating,” playful and amazing, thrives in orbit.
In Samantha Harvey’s wistful. novel Orbital , written as the interval of 16 planetary circuits during a single day, an international crew, skimming the oceans and feeling “like seabirds,” finds how ordinary events turn sharply playful in near-earth orbit. A sleeping sack will billow like a living thing. They will slurp and play with bubbles of tea made to form perfect spheres hovering in free fall.
Reaching out as the continents spin by below—“Hello,” “Bonjour,” “Konnichiwa,” “Do you read me?”—they hold fleeting conversations with stunned ham-radio hobbyists who, at a momentary loss, might ask how a toilet works in space.
Gazing out, they watch as the sun disappears and reappears like a “mechanical toy.” As the image leaves them alone with their thoughts about the fragility of home and its thin, blue-glowing, atmospheric rind, they track man-made threats, intensifying cyclones and hurricanes, and creeping deserts. But passing overhead, and feeling hopeful for humankind’s prospect, they also observe the sole human artifact visible in the reflections of vast, bright, planet-saving solar arrays in Spain.
If we humans can take play into space, learning in exploration, gaining in perspective, there’s hope.
Marianthi Liapi, Edith Ackerman, "Microgravity Playscapes: Play in Long-term Space Missions," American Journal of Play (Winter, 2016).
Austin Mardon, et. al . "The Role of Asynchronous Role-Playing Games in Enhancing Social Cohesion During Long-Duration Space Missions," J ournal of the British Interplanetary Society (January, 2026).
Samantha Harvey, Orbital: A Novel (2024).
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Scott G. Eberle, Ph.D. , is the vice president for play studies at The Strong, editor of its American Journal of Play , and lead contributor to its re:Play Blog .
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