Picture an athlete six times stronger than a normal human. Train them in gymnastics, and have them do their best in an Earthly gymnasium. Then slow down the film by a factor of sqrt(6). That’s exactly what a normal gymnast would look like on the Moon.
EDIT: Whoa, the two space stations are that close in volume? I’d have expected that the ISS would be several times larger than Skylab, not just a hair more.
One thing the astronauts discovered on the moon was that while things like jumping up were pretty straightforward (you just end up jumping about 6 times as high, as was already mentioned), other things weren’t so straightforward. Walking, running, and other motions rely on a certain amount of friction between you and the surface you are on, and the moon’s reduced gravity reduces the friction as well. So if you try to run, all you end up doing is slipping your feet. As a result, the astronauts found that the easiest way to move across the lunar surface was to bunny hop.
If they tried to do a normal 100 yard dash on the moon, it would end up as a rather comical event of athletes cartoonishly running with their feet slipping on the surface while barely moving forward. A lot of other typical earth-based sports would be similarly affected.
The outer diameter of SkyLab was 6.6 m, as compared to ~4.5 m for most ISS modules, but it’s pretty clear that a huge fraction of the ISS volume is taken by non-habitable space, whereas much of SkyLab (in particular, the ring shown above) gets almost the full diameter. Wouldn’t surprise me if the effective diameters were something like 2 m vs. 6 m. That factor of 9 makes up for a lot of missing length.
Along with allowing zero-G simulation the ‘vomit comet’ could alter its parabolic course and instead simulate the 1/6 gravity of the Moon as well. I can’t find the footage of it but I’ve seen film of the Apollo astronauts wearing their lunar surface suits and practicing walking and moving around inside the plane (on a simulated lunar surface) in just this manner.
They did that on MythBusters, too.
Randall Munroe did an article on lunar swimming, in which he concludes, among other awesome results, that Michael Phelps could probably jump out of a pool on the Moon 2 to 3 meters into the air, and a champion finswimmer could reach 4 to 5 meters.
–Mark
Boxing. Either they’d adjust to the lack of friction by letting their feet slide, or they’d change their action to get an equal-and-oposite effect (backwards kick? Running roundhouse?). Also, they could lean in and out a lot farther! It would be a whole new discipline.
(Ok, actually they’d probably just put on sticky shoes or roughen the ring floor)