At least Houston hopes it is! No, it’s not a rebellion of the flight controllers. The New York Times (9/7/08) reports it’s just a friendly game of interplanetary chess between Station astronauts and ground crews.

American astronaut Greg Chamitoff, who arrived recently with the astronauts who installed the Japanese Experiment Module and is an emissary of the Florida Chess Association, brought his own plastic chess set, complete with velcro on the pieces to combat zero-g!

NASA regards this whole thing as a good move. “This competition with the crew has been well-received. Part of it may be the competitive nature of our flight controllers. Who wouldn’t want to beat an astronaut, someone with the right stuff,” according to a controller on the NASA web site.

Dr. Chamitoff is apparently more than a match for mission control. After winning his first game, he is now engaged in 6 matches running concurrently with the ground. You can track his success here.

True space colonization involves living, working, and playing in space. Space chess shows that life there, even now, includes important times for recreation just like it does here on Earth.

However Astronaut Chamitoff returns to Earth in November, not long before Christmas. And if his ground controller friends and he are caught publicly discussing their chess victories, there may be a problem…because some people can’t stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer.

(Thanks to Nicholas Johnson for the chess puns.)

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