POSTED BY

John Brownlee

AT 10:17 AM
Thursday May 1, 2008

Military and Space

boomerang • clips • iss • space

Boomerangs hurled aboard International Space Station

A Japanese person throwing a boomerang and having it to return to him aboard the International Space Station is not going to throw the world of aerodynamic studies into chaos. A boomerang should work in any environment with air, if properly thrown. Now, having it return to you in vacuum would be the real trick... perhaps attainable by futuristic laser guided systems. Still, there is something comforting about this video, not only for its playful outer-space quiescence, but because it confirms that we will be able to arm our Australian space marines with their native throwing sticks when the Heliothane come swarming back in time for our natural resources.

Outer Space Boomerang [YouTube via Gizmodo via Pink Tentacle]

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7 Comments

Jake0748

#1 – 10:42 AM May 1, 2008

It's a cool video, but is that 3-bladed thing a real boomerang? Would an actual authentic Australian person use it? I've seen these things before, but I thought a true boomerang was a sort-of L-shaped piece of wood.

Heck even a Frisbee will come back to you if you throw it right. But I don't think that makes it a boomerang. Just askin' :)

Not a Doktor

#2 – 10:54 AM May 1, 2008

it probably works better with lower gravity

Imagine though if he threw it a bit too hard and it accidentally hit the self destruct button

Jake0748

#3 – 10:56 AM May 1, 2008

#2 - LOL, That would be embarrassing.

morehumanthanhuman

#4 – 8:39 PM May 1, 2008

That was the coolest thing ever. Period.

I could imagine Ender doing something like this.

Itsumishi

#5 – 10:10 PM May 1, 2008

Is just me or is bouncing off the walls?

Also @Jake0748.
Most Aboriginal boomerangs where a simple piece of wood in a kind of L shape. (Although not usually with a 90 degree angle usually a bit straighter than that). However ancient Boomerangs have also been discovered in a number of other countries (in fact according to wikipedia the oldest one ever discovered was found in Poland, 20,000 years old).

And also for referrence, I'd guess that maybe 1% of the Australian population has any idea of how to throw a boomerang so that it comes back. I tried it once, it flew out of my hand much like any normal stick then dropped to ground without even starting to turn.

O_P

#6 – 1:09 AM May 2, 2008

Wiki answers says that 2.4% of Australians are Aboriginal, so I'd say the number of Australians that can throw a boomerang is over that.
I learned to throw them on a school camp, as did a whole bunch of other Australian school children. I'm not Aboriginal either.

The ones used by Australian Aboriginals for hunting were sharp, so you wouldn't really want them to come back. They were designed to fly straight so you could crack a kangaroo in the skull with it.

Captcha

#7 – 2:18 PM May 4, 2008

+1 for the Asher reference.

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