Imagine you are sitting somewhere in the Mojave desert. You’ve just strapped on a space suit, kissed your girlfriend and waved to a throng of like minded morons. Now, you are waiting for the inevitable. You wonder how you’ll do. Will your equipment malfunction and you burn? Or will you ride the atmosphere for 60 miles straight down?

A lab coat wearing smart guy waves to you. You stand up, brush yourself off, and walk over to your on personal rocket ride to lower earth orbit. You buckle up, take a deep breath, wait for your green go light, as do your three competitors, and pray. One, two, three, GO. Your pod engine, and yes that is all it is, a capsule sitting on a rocket, blasts off and you get pushed back into your seat with several gravities worth of force.

In just a few minutes you reach low earth orbit at around 60 miles. Your rocket detaches and falls back to earth to burn up in the atmosphere. A sight that you will get to enjoy watching. Your pod seams crack, explosive bolts fire, the sides of your cocoon fall away and there you are, floating in space, with a space suit and a atmosboard.

You’ll hover there for a few minutes. I have to admit, I’ve seen the vids and virtuals, it’s a hell of a view. Beautiful really. But, you aren’t there to take in the view. Your mic goes off and the refs give the go ahead. You and your fellow fallers are to begin your descent. You have to wonder about a race where you get a prize for surviving.

You spin your board, give it a shot of thruster, point yourself towards the ground and hang on to your ass. At first it’s slow. the earth looms large beneath you but it seems as if you’ll never reach it. And then, the race begins.

Imagine a 60 mile ride through compressed atmospheres causing a fireball with you in the middle of it. If you tilt your board at the wrong angle, you burn. This is not a sport for the feint of heart. Now, I know you are asking the same questions I am, why in god’s name would someone do this? The Borealis effect of course. When fallers reach a certain altitude, I forget what it is, they can release packets from their board of highly charged particles. Those particles interact with the upper atmosphere and create a Borealis effect. And, you guessed, it tilt your board, surf the fireball and you can make your own effects. Oh it’s crazy cool alright, crazy insane too.

Ok, ok, all you die hard fans out there are screaming at your vids right now. No,there hasn’t been a death in this sport in a long time.The suits are safe and can survive the burn on re-entry. Fallers rarely get hurt and most are long time veterans at the sport. Still, on a race by race basis, it is the most deadliest sport on earth. I make that distinction mind you, on earth, there are way more deadlier ones elsewhere in the system for sure.

So, the point of all this is, there is no way a sport as dangerous as orbit jumping will make it into the Olympics.  The fact that they insist and demand inclusion is driving me bonkers. It doesn’t matter how safe you think your sport is, it just isn’t. Yes, it is cool. Yes, it is neat to watch the Borealis effect from multiple fallers. But really, how can this possibly be an Olympic sport? If just one mishap occurred, the Olympics may be shut down for another 50 years just like during the 22nd century. That would truly be a shame. Especially since they just decided to include non-terrestrial governments in the mix. I personally feel that the Spatial Olympics is just fine without orbital jumping. It’s a nice addition to Winter and Summer Olympics and is full of enough of danger to keep things interesting without being too dangerous.

In my opinion, Orbit Jumping should be left to the fringe sports category and not included in the main stream. And all you fallers, jumpers, whatever you call yourselves, stop being so pissy about it. You’ve got your sport, it’s legit, you get respect, you get major time on the vids, virtuals and networks. Why do you want to be in the Olympics anyway? Give it a few decades, keep your safty up, don’t whine so much and maybe you’ll get in.